THE  STORY^^-^EV-YORK 


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-      BY 

H.C.BUNNER 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

LIBRARY 


THE  WILMER  COLLECTION 

OF  CIVIL  WAR  NOVELS 

PRESENTED  BY 

RICHARD  H.  WILMER,  JR. 


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Then   out  of  the  door  came  Jacob   Dolph. 


THE    STORY 


OF 


A    NEW    YORK    HOUSE 


BY 

H.   C.    BUNNER 


ILLUSTRATED  "BY  A.  B.  FROST 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1887 


CorVRIGHT,   1887,  BY 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


Press  of  J.  J.  Little  &  Co. 
Astor  Place,  New  York. 


TO 

A.  L.  B. 


531613 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Then  out  of  the  door  came  Jacob  Dolph      .      Frontispiece 


PAGE 


"/  thiunped  him  "      .         .         .         .         .         .         .         -14 

"  It's    a    monstrous  great  place  for   a    country-house, 

Mr.  Dolph'' i8 

There  was  only  one  idea,  and  that  was  flight    .         .  28 

The  light  flickered  o?i  the  top  of  the  church  spire         .  32 

(Bji  F.  Hopkinson  Smith.) 

They  hesitated  a  second,  looking  at  the  great  arm  chair  yj 

"  Stay  there,  sir — you,  sir,  you,  Jacob  Dolph  .'  "     .         .  41 

After  awhile  he  began  to  take  timorous  strolls    .         .  46 


vi  List  of  IllMstrations. 

PAGE 

Jacob  Dolph  the  elder  *  ^  *  stood  on  his  hearth  rug       .     51 

And  thc7i  he  marched  off  to  bed  by  himself,  suffering  no 

one  to  go  with  him       .         .         .         .         .         .         -55 

/;/  qtiict  morning  hours  *  *  -^^  when  his  daughter  sat  at 

his  feet        .........     77 

"  Mons'us  gra7t  di?t7ieh,  seh  f"      .....  79 

"A/l  of  a  suddoi,  chock  forward  he  went,  right  on  his 

face'' 83 

He  heard  the  weak,  spasmodic  wail  of  another  Dolph  88 

''Central  American''  said  the  clerk          ....  107 

''Looks  like  his  father,"  was  Mr.  Daw's  comment     .  109 

O' Reagan  of  Castle  Reagan 118 

"If  it  hadji't    been  for    the    Dolphs,   devil   the   rattle 

you'd  hai'c  had"         .         .         .         .         .         .         .120 


List  of  Illustrations,  vii 

PAGE 

''  I  know'd  yoii\i  take  nie  in,  Misf  Dolph,'"  he  panted  132 
''Have  you  got  a  nigger  here? "  .  ,  .  .  .133 
Abrain  Van  Riper  makes  a  business  couDnunication  .  141 
And  so  she  set  his  necktie  right,  and  he  went         .         -144 

Looking  on  his  face,  she  saw  death  quietly  coining  upon 

him       ........  .         .   149 

Finial 151 


THE  STORY 
OF  A  NEW  YORK  HOUSE. 


I 


I. 

HEAR,"  said  Mrs.  Abram  Van  Riper, 
seated  at  her  breakfast-table,  and  watch- 
ing the  morning  sunlight  dance  on  the  front 
of  the  great  Burrell  house  on  the  opposite  side 
of  Pine  Street,  "that  the  Dolphs  are  going  to 
build  a  prodigious  fine  house  out  of  town — 
somewhere  up  near  the  Rynders's  place." 

"  And  I  hear,"  said  Abram  Van  Riper,  lay- 
ing down  last  night's  Evening  Post,  "  that 
Jacob  Dolph  is  going  to  give  up  business. 
And  if  he  does,  it's  a  disgrace  to  the  town." 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  1807,  and  Abram 
Van  Riper  was  getting  well  over  what  he  con- 
sidered the  meridian  line  of  sixty  years.  He 
was  hale  and  hearty;  his  business  was  flourish- 
ing ;  his  boy  was  turning  out  all  that  should 


2  The  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House. 

have  been  expected  of  one  of  the  Van  Riper 
stock  ;  the  refracted  sunHght  from  the  walls  of 
the  stately  house  occupied  by  the  Cashier  of 
the  Bank  of  the  United  States  lit  with  a  sub- 
dued secondary  glimmer  the  Van  Riper  silver 
on  the  breakfast-table — the  squat  teapot  and 
slop-bowl,  the  milk-pitcher,  that  held  a  quart, 
and  the  apostle-spoon  in  the  broken  loaf-sugar 
on  the  Delft  plate.  Abram  Van  Riper  was 
decorously  happy,  as  a  New  York  merchant 
should  be.  In  all  other  respects,  he  w^as 
pleased  to  think,  he  was  what  a  New  York 
merchant  should  be,  and  the  word  of  the  law 
and  the  prophets  was  fulfilled  with  him  and  in 
his  house. 

"  I'm  sure,"  Mrs.  Van  Riper  began  again, 
somewhat  querulously,  "  I  can't  see  why  Jacob 
Dolph  shouldn't  give  up  business,  if  he's  so 
minded.  He's  a  monstrous  fortune,  from  all  I 
hear — a  good  hundred  thousand  dollars." 

"  A  hundred  thousand  dollars  !  "  repeated 
her  husband,  scornfully.  "  Ay,  and  twice  twen- 
ty thousand  pounds  on  the  top  of  that.  He's 
done  well,  has  Dolph.  All  the  more  reason  he 
should  stick  to  his  trade  ;  and  not  go  to  lolling 


The  Story  of  a  Nezu    York  House.  3 

in  the  sun,  like  a  runner  at  the  Custom-House 
door.  He's  not  within  ten  years  of  me,  and 
here  he  must  build  his  country  house,  and  set 
up  for  the  fine  gentleman.  Jacob  Dolph  !  Did 
I  go  on  his  note,  when  he  came  back  from 
France,  brave  as  my  master,  in  '94,  or  did  I 
not  ?  And  where  'ud  he  have  raised  twenty 
thousand  in  this  town,  if  I  hadn't  ?  What's 
got  into  folks  nowadays  ?  Damn  me  if  I  can 
see  I 

His  wife  protested,  in  wifely  fashion.  ''  I'm 
sure,  Van  Riper,"  she  began,  '^  you've  no  need 
to  fly  in  such  a  huff  if  I  so  much  as  speak  of 
folks  who  have  some  conceit  of  being  genteel. 
It's  only  proper  pride  of  Mr.  Dolph  to  have  a 
country  house,  and  —  "  (her  voice  faltering  a 
little,  timorously)  *'  ride  in  and  —  and  out " 

''Ride!''  snorted  Mr.  Van  Riper.  "In  a 
carriage,   maybe  ?  " 

''  In  a  carriage.  Van  Riper.  You  may  think 
to  ride  in  a  carriage  is  like  being  the  Pope  of 
Rome ;  but  there's  some  that  knows  better. 
And  if  you'd  set  up  your  carriage,"  went  on 
the  undaunted  Mrs.  Van  Riper,  "and  gone 
over  to  Greenwich  Street  two  years  ago,  as  I'd 


4  The  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House. 

have  had  you,  and  made  yourself  friendly  with 
those  people  there,  I'd  have  been  on  the 
Orphan  Asylum  Board  at  this  very  minute  ; 
ditid  you  would " 

Mr.  Van  Riper  knew  all  that  speech  by 
heart,  in  all  its  variations.  He  knew  perfectly 
well  what  it  would  end  in,  this  time,  although 
he  was  not  a  man  of  quick  perception  :  **  He 
would  have  been  a  member  of  the  new  Histor- 
ical Society." 

"  Yes,"  he  thought  to  himself,  as  he  found 
his  hat  and  shuffled  out  into  Pine  Street ;  "and 
John  Pintard  would  have  had  my  good  check 
in  his  pocket  for  his  tuppenny  society.  Pine 
Street  is  fine  enough  for  me." 

Mr.  Van  Riper  had  more  cause  for  his  petu- 
lancy  than  he  would  have  acknowledged  even 
to  himself.  He  was  a  man  who  had  kept  his 
shop  open  all  through  Clinton's  occupancy, 
and  who  had  had  no  trouble  with  the  British. 
And  when  they  were  gone  he  had  had  to  do 
enough  to  clear  his  skirts  of  any  smirch  of 
Toryism,  and  to  implant  in  his  own  breast  a 
settled  feeling  of  militant  Americanism.  He 
did    not    like    it    that    the    order    of    things 


TJie  Story  of  a  New   York  House,  5 

should  change — and  the  order  of  things  was 
changing.  The  town  was  growing  out  of  all 
knowledge  of  itself.  Here  they  had  their 
Orphan  Asylum,  and  their  Botanical  Garden, 
and  their  Historical  Society;  and  the  Jews 
were  having  it  all  their  own  way ;  and  now 
people  were  talking  of  free  schools,  and  of  lay- 
ing out  a  map  for  the  upper  end  of  the  town 
to  grow  on,  in  the  ''  system  "  of  straight  streets 
and  avenues.  To  the  devil  with  systems  and 
avenues !  said  he.  That  was  all  the  doing  of 
those  cursed  Frenchmen.  He  knew  how  it 
would  be  when  they  brought  their  plaguy 
frigate  here  in  the  first  fever  year — '93 — and 
the  fools  marched  up  from  Peck's  Slip  after  a 
red  nightcap,  and  howled  their  cut-throat  song 
all  night  long. 

It  began  to  hum  itself  in  his  head  as  he 
walked  toward  Water  Street — Ca  ira — qa  ira 
— les  aristocrats  a  la  lanterne.  A  whiff  of  the 
wind  that  blew  through  Paris  streets  in  the 
terrible  times  had  come  across  the  Atlantic 
and  tickled  his  dull  old   Dutch  nostrils. 

But  something  worse  than  this  vexed  the 
conservative  spirit  of  Abram  Van  Riper.     He 


6  TJic  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

could  forgive  John  Pintard — whose  inspiration, 
I  think,  foreran  the  twentieth  century — his 
fancy  for  free  schools  and  historical  societies, 
as  he  had  forgiven  him  his  sidewalk-building 
fifteen  years  before  ;  he  could  proudly  overlook 
the  fact  that  the  women  were  busying  them- 
selves with  all  manner  of  wild  charities;  he 
could  be  contented  though  he  knew  that  the 
Hebrew  Hart  was  president  of  that  merchants' 
club  at  Baker's,  of  which  he  himself  would  fain 
have  been  a  member.  But  there  was  some 
thing  in  the  air  that  he  could  neither  forgive 
nor  overlook,  nor  be  contented  with. 

There  was  a  change  coming  over  the  town — 
a  change  which  he  could  not  clearly  define, 
even  in  his  own  mind.  There  was  a  great 
keeping  of  carriages,  he  knew.  A  dozen  men 
had  bought  carriages,  or  were  likely  to  buy 
them  at  any  time.  The  women  were  forming 
societies  for  the  improvement  of  this  and  that. 
And  he,  who  had  moved  up-town  from  Dock 
Street,  was  now  in  an  old-fashioned  quarter. 
All  this  he  knew,  but  the  something  which 
made  him  uneasy  was  more  subtile. 

Within  the  last  few  years  he  had  observed 


TJie  Story  of  a  Nezu    York  House.  j 

an  introduction  of  certain  strange  distinctions 
in  the  social  code  of  the  town.  It  had  been 
vaguely  intimated  to  him — perhaps  by  his 
wife,  he  could  not  remember — that  there  was 
a  difference  between  his  trade  and  Jacob 
Dolph's  trade.  He  was  a  ship-chandler.  Ja- 
cob Dolph  sold  timber.  Their  shops  were 
side  by  side  ;  Jacob  Dolph's  rafts  lay  in  the 
river  in  front  of  Abram  Van  Riper's  shop, 
and  Abram  Van  Riper  had  gone  on  Jacob 
Dolph's  note,  only  a  few  years  ago.  Yet,  it 
seemed  that  it  was  genteel  oi  Jacob  Dolph  to 
sell  timber,  and  it  was  not  genteel  of  Abram 
Van  Riper  to  be  a  ship-chandler.  There  was, 
then,  a  difference  between  Jacob  Dolph  and 
Abram  Van  Riper — a  difference  which,  in  forty 
years,  Abram  Van  Riper  had  never  conceived 
of.  There  were  folks  who  held  thus.  For 
himself,  he  did  not  understand  i*:.  What  dif- 
ference there  was  between  selling  the  wood  to 
make  a  ship,  and  selling  the  stores  to  go  inside 
of  her,  he  could  not  understand. 

The  town  was  changing  for  the  worse ;  he 
saw  that.  He  did  not  wish — God  forbid  ! — 
that  his  son  John  should  go  running  about  to 


S  The  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House. 

pleasure-gardens.  But  it  would  be  no  more 
than  neighborly  if  these  young  bucks  who 
went  out  every  night  should  ask  him  to  go 
with  them.  Were  William  Irving's  boys  and 
Harry  Brevoort  and  those  young  Kembles  too 
fine  to  be  friends  with  his  boy?  Not  that  he'd 
go  with  them  a-rollicking — no,  not  that — but 
'twould  be  neighborly.  It  was  all  wrong,  he 
thought;  they  were  going  whither  they  knew 
not,  and  wherefore  they  knew  not  ;  and  with 
that  he  cursed  their  airs  and  their  gi aces,  and 
pounded  down  to  the  Tontine,  to  put  his  name 
at  the  head  of  the  list  of  those  who  subscribed 
for  a  testimonial  service  of  plate,  to  be  pre- 
sented to  our  esteemed  fellow-citizen  and 
valued  associate,  Jacob  Dolph,  on  his  retire- 
ment from  active  business. 


Jacob  Dolph  at  this  moment  was  setting 
forth  from  his  house  in  State  Street,  whose  pil- 
lared balcony,  rising  from  the  second  floor  to 
the  roof,  caught  a  side  glance  of  the  morning 
sun,  that  loved  the  Battery  far  better  than  Pine 
Street.     He  had  his  little  boy  by  the  hand — 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.  g 

young  Jacob,  his  miniature,  his  heir,  and  the 
last  and  only  living  one  of  his  eight  children. 
Mr.  Dolph  walked  with  his  stock  thrust  out 
and  the  lower  end  of  his  waistcoat  drawn  in — 
he  was  Colonel  Dolph,  if  he  had  cared  to  keep 
the  title  ;  and  had  come  back  from  Monmouth 
with  a  hole  in  his  hip  that  gave  him  a  bit  of  a 
limp,  even  now  in  eighteen-hundred-and-seven. 
He  and  the  boy  marched  forth  like  an  army 
with  a  small  but  enthusiastic  left  wing,  into  the 
poplar-studded  Battery.  The  wind  blew  fresh 
off  the  bay ;  the  waves  beat  up  against  the  sea- 
wall, and  swirled  with  a  chuckle  under  Castle 
Garden  bridge.  A  large  brig  was  coming  up 
before  the  wind,  all  her  sails  set,  as  though  she 
were  afraid — and  she  was — of  British  frigates 
outside  the  Hook.  Two  or  three  fat  little 
boats,  cat-rigged,  after  the  good  old  New  York 
fashion,  were  beating  down  toward  Staten 
Island,  to  hunt  for  the  earliest  blue-fish. 

The  two  Dolphs  crossed  the  Battery,  where 
the  elder  bowed  to  his  friends  among  the  mer- 
chants who  lounged  about  the  city's  pleasure- 
ground,  lazily  chatting  over  their  business  af- 
fairs.    Then    they    turned    up    past     Bowling 


lo         The  Story  of  a  Neiv    York  House. 

Green  into  Broadway,  where  Mr.  Dolph  kept 
on  bowing,  for  half  the  town  was  out,  taking 
the  fresh  morning  for  marketing  and  all  man- 
ner of  shopping.  Everybody  knew  Jacob 
Dolph  afar  off  by  his  blue  coat  with  the  silver 
buttons,  his  nankeen  waistcoat,  and  his  red- 
checked  Indian  silk  neckcloth.  He  made  it  a 
sort  of  uniform.  Captain  Beare  had  brought 
him  a  bolt  of  nankeen  and  a  silk  kerchief  every 
year  since  1793,  when  Mr.  Dolph  gave  him 
credit  for  the  timber  of  which  the  Ursa  Mijwr 
was  built. 

And  everybody  seemed  willing  to  make  ac- 
quaintance with  young  Jacob's  London-made 
kerseymere  breeches,  of  a  bright  canary  color, 
and  with  his  lavender  silk  coat,  and  with  his 
little  chapemi  de  Paris.  Indeed,  young  Jacob 
was  quite  the  most  prominent  moving  spec- 
tacle on  Broadway,  until  they  came  to  John 
Street,  and  saw  something  rolling  down  the 
street  that  quite  cut  the  yellow  kerseymeres 
out  of  all  popular  attention. 

This  was  a  carriage,  the  body  of  which  was 
shaped  like  a  huge  section  of  a  cheese,  set  up 
on  its  small  end  upon  broad,  swinging  straps 


The  Story  of  a  Nczv    York  House.        1 1 

between  two  pairs  of  wheels.  It  was  not  un- 
like a  piece  of  cheese  in  color,  for  it  was  of  a 
dull  and  faded  grayish-green,  like  mould,  re- 
lieved by  pale-yellow  panels  and  gilt  orna- 
ments. It  was  truly  an  interesting  structure, 
and  it  attracted  nearly  as  much  notice  on 
Broadway  in  1807  as  it  might  to-day.  But  it 
was  received  with  far  more  reverence,  for  it 
was  a  court  coach,  and  it  belonged  to  the  Des 
Anges  family,  the  rich  Huguenots  of  New 
Rochelle.  It  had  been  built  in  France,  thirty 
years  before,  and  had  been  sent  over  as  a  pres- 
ent to  his  brother  from  the  Count  des  Anges, 
who  had  himself  neglected  to  make  use  of  his 
opportunities  to  embrace  the  Protestant  re- 
ligion. 

When  the  white-haired  old  lady  who  sat  in 
this  coach,  with  a  very  little  girl  by  her  side, 
saw  Mr.  Dolph  and  his  son,  she  leaned  out  of 
the  window  and  signalled  to  the  old  peri- 
wigged driver  to  stop,  and  he  drew  up  close  to 
the  sidewalk.  And  then  Mr.  Dolph  and  his 
son  came  up  to  the  window  and  took  off  their 
hats,  and  made  a  great  low  bow  and  a  small 
low  bow  to  the  old  lady  and  the  little  girl. 


12        The  Story  of  a   Neiv    York  House. 

"  Madam  Des  Angcs,"  said  Mr.  Dolph,  with 
an  idiom  which  he  had  learned  when  he  was 
presented  at  the  court  of  Louis  the  Sixteenth, 
"  has  surely  not  driven  down  from  New  Ro- 
chelle  this  morning?  That  would  tax  even  her 
powers." 

Madam  Des  Anges  did  not  smile — she  had 
no  taste  for  smiling — but  she  bridled  amiably. 

"  No,  Mr.  Dolph,"  she  replied  ;  *'  I  have  been 
staying  with  my  daughter-in-law,  at  her  house 
at  King's  Bridge,  and  I  have  come  to  town  to 
put  my  little  granddaughter  to  school.  She  is 
to  have  the  privilege  of  being  a  pupil  of  Mme. 
Dumesnil." 

Madam  Des  Anges  indicated  the  little  girl 
with  a  slight  movement,  as  though  she  did  not 
wish  to  allow  the  child  more  consideration  than 
a  child  deserved.  The  little  girl  turned  a  great 
pair  of  awed  eyes,  first  on  her  grandmother, 
and  then  on  the  gentlemen,  and  spoke  no 
word.  Young  Jacob  Dolph  stared  hard  at 
her,  and  then  contemplated  his  kerseymeres 
with  lazy  satisfaction.  He  had  no  time  for 
girls.  And  a  boy  who  had  his  breeches  made 
in    London    was   a   boy    of   consequence,  and 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House,        1 3 

need  not  concern  himself  about  every  one  he 
saw. 

''And  this  is  your  son,  I  make  no  doubt," 
went  on  Madam  Des  Anges  ;  "  you  must  bring 
him  to  see  us  at  King's  Bridge,  while  we  are 
so  near  you.  These  young  people  should 
know  each  other." 

Mr.  Dolph  said  he  would,  and  showed  a  be- 
coming sense  of  the  honor  of  the  invitation ; 
and  he  made  young  Jacob  say  a  little  speech 
of  thanks,  which  he  did  with  a  doubtful  grace  ; 
and  then  Mr.  Dolph  sent  his  compliments  to 
Madam  Des  Anges'  daughter-in-law,  and  Mad- 
am Des  Anges  sent  her  compliments  to  Mrs. 
Dolph,  and  there  was  more  stately  bowing,  and 
the  carriage  lumbered  on,  with  the  little  girl 
looking  timorously  out  of  the  window,  her 
great  eyes  fixed  on  the  yellow  kerseymeres,  as 
they  twinkled  up  the  street. 

"Papa,"  said  young  Jacob,  as  they  turned 
the  corner  of  Ann  Street,  "  when  may  I  go  to  a 
boys'  school  ?  I'm  monstrous  big  to  be  at  Mrs. 
Kilmaster's.     And  I  don't  like  to  be  a  girl-boy." 

''Are  you  a  girl-boy?"  inquired  his  father, 
smiling. 


14         The  Story  of  a  Nciu  York  House. 

*'  Aleck  Cameron  called  me  one  yesterday. 
He  said  I  was  a  girl-boy  because  I  went  to 
dame-school.  He  called  me  Missy,  too  !  "  the 
boy  went  on,  with  his  breast  swelling. 


•      ■■■-  ^\^-AV  -     .-  * 


"We'll  see  about  it,"  said  Mr.  Dolph,  smil- 
ing again  ;  and  they  walked  on  in  silence  to 
Mrs.  Kilmaster's  door,  where  he  struck  the 
knocker,  and  a  neat  mulatto  girl  opened  the 
narrow  door.     Then  he  patted  his  boy  on  the 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        1 5 

head  and  bade  him  good-by  for  the  morning, 
and  told  him  to  be  a  good  boy  at  school.  He 
took  a  step  or  two  and  looked  back.  Young 
Jacob  lingered  on  the  step,  as  if  he  had  a  fur- 
ther communication  to  make.     He  paused. 

''  I   thumped  him,"  said    young  Jacob,  and 
the  narrow  door  swallowed  him  up. 

Mr.  Dolph  continued  on  his  walk  up  Broad- 
way. As  he  passed  the  upper  end  of  the  Com- 
mon he  looked  with  interest  at  the  piles  of  red 
sandstone  among  the  piles  of  white  marble, 
where  they  were  building  the  new  City  Hall. 
The  Council  had  ordered  that  the  rear  or 
northward  end  of  the  edifice  should  be  con- 
structed of  red  stone  ;  because  red  stone  was 
cheap,  and  none  but  a  few  suburbans  would 
ever  look  down  on  it  from  above  Chambers 
Street.  Mr.  Dolph  shook  his  head.  He 
thought  he  knew  better.  He  had  watched  the 
growth  of  trade  ;  he  knew  the  room  for  fur- 
ther growth ;  he  had  noticed  the  long  con- 
verging lines  of  river-front,  with  their  un- 
bounded accommodation  for  wharves  and 
slips.  He  believed  that  the  day  would  come 
—and   his  own  boy   might   see   it — w^hen   the 


1 6         The  Story  of  a  Nciu  York  House. 

business  of  the  city  would  crowd  the  dwelling- 
houses  from  the  river  side,  east  and  west,  as 
far,  maybe,  as  Chambers  Street.  He  had  no 
doubt  that  the  boy  might  find  himself,  forty 
years  from  then,  in  a  populous  and  genteel 
neighborhood.  Perhaps  he  foresaw  too  much  ; 
but  he  had  a  jealous  yearning  for  a  house  that 
should  be  a  home  for  him,  and  for  his  child, 
and  for  his  grandchildren.  He  wanted  a  place 
where  his  wife  might  have  a  garden  ;  a  place 
which  the  boy  would  grow  up  to  love  and 
cherish,  where  the  boy  might  bring  a  wife 
some  day.  And  even  if  it  were  a  little  out  of 
town — why,  his  wife  did  not  want  a  rout  every 
night ;  and  it  was  likely  his  old  friends  would 
come  out  and  see  him  once  in  a  while,  and 
smoke  a  pipe  in  his  garden  and  eat  a  dish  of 
strawberries,  perhaps. 

As  he  thought  it  all  over  for  the  hundredth 
time,  weighing  for  and  against  in  his  gentle 
and  deliberative  mind,  he  strolled  far  out  of 
town.  There  was  a  house  here  and  there  on 
the  road — a  house  with  a  trim,  stiff  little  gar- 
den, full  of  pink  and  white  and  blue  flowers  in 
orderly,  clam-shell-bordered  beds.     But   it  was 


TJic  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House.        17 

certainly,  he  had  to  admit,  as  he  looked  about 
him,  very  countrified  indeed.  It  seemed  that 
the  city  must  lose  itself  if  it  wandered  up  here 
among  these  rolling  meadows  and  wooded 
hills.  Yet  even  up  here,  half  way  to  Green- 
wich Village,  there  were  little  outposts  of  the 
town — clumps  of  neighborly  houses,  mostly 
of  the  poorer  class,  huddling  together  to  form 
small  nuclei  for  sporadic  growth.  There  was 
one  on  his  right,  near  the  head  of  Collect 
Street.  Perhaps  that  quizzical  little  old  Ger- 
man was  right,  who  had  told  him  that  King's 
Bridge  property  was  a  rational  investment. 

He  went  across  the  hill  where  Grand  Street 
crosses  Broadway,  and  up  past  what  was  then 
North  and  is  to-day  Houston  Street,  and  then 
turned  down  a  straggling  road  that  ran  east 
and  west.  He  walked  toward  the  Hudson,  and 
passed  a  farmhouse  or  two,  and  came  to  a  bare 
place  where  there  were  no  trees,  and  only  a 
few  tangled  bushes  and  ground-vines. 

Here  a  man  was  sitting  on  a  stone,  awaiting 
him.     As  he  came  near,  the  man  arose. 

"  Ah,  it's  you,  Weeks?  And  have  you  the 
plan  ?  " 


8         The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 


"  Yes,  Colonel — Mr.  Dolph.  I've  put  the 
window  where  you  want  it — that  is,  my  brother 
Levi  did — thoui^h  I  don't  see  as  you're  going  to 


'Mm., 


i^M 


r  ^'^  lif.X; 


;^:^f^w..  -^ 


have  much  trouble  in  looking  over  anything 
that's  likely  to  come  between  you  and  the 
river." 

Mr.  Dolph  took  the  crisp  roll  of  parchment 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.        19 

and  studied  it  with  loving  interest.  It  had 
gone  back  to  Ezra  Weeks,  the  builder,  and  his 
brother  Levi,  the  architect,  for  the  twentieth 
time,  perhaps.  Was  there  ever  an  architect's 
plan  put  in  the  bauds  of  a  happy  nest-builder 
where  the  windows  did  not  go  up  and  down 
from  day  to  day,  and  the  doors  did  not  crawl 
all  around  the  house,  and  the  veranda  did  not 
contract  and  expand  like  a  sensitive  plant ;  or 
where  the  rooms  and  closets  and  corridors  did 
not  march  backward  and  forward  and  in  and 
out  at  the  bidding  of  every  fond,  untutored 
whim  ? 

"  It's  a  monstrous  great  big  place  for  a  coun- 
try-house, Mr.  Dolph,"  said  Ezra  Weeks,  as  he 
looked  over  Jacob  Dolph's  shoulder  at  the 
drawings  of  the  house,  and  shook  his  head  with 
a  sort  of  pitying  admiration  for  the  projector's 
audacity. 

They  talked  for  a  while,  and  looked  at  the 
site  as  if  they  might  see  more  in  it  than  they 
saw  yesterday,  and  then  Weeks  set  off  for  the 
city,  pledged  to  hire  laborers  and  to  begin  the 
work  on  the  morrow. 

*'  I  think  I  can  get  you  some  of  that  stone 


20        The  Story  of  a  Nciu    York  House. 

that's  going  into  the  back  of  the  City  Hall, 
if  you  say  so,  Mr.  Dolph.  That  stone  was 
bought  cheap,  you  know — bought  for  the 
city." 

''See  what  you  can  do,  Weeks,"  said  Mr. 
Dolph  ;  and  Mr.  Weeks  went  whistling  down 
the  road. 

Jacob  Dolph  walked  around  his  prospective 
domain.  He  kicked  a  wild  blackberry  bush 
aside,  to  look  at  the  head  of  a  stake,  and  tried 
to  realize  that  that  would  be  the  corner  of  his 
house.  He  went  to  where  the  parlor  fireplace 
would  be,  and  stared  at  the  grass  and  stones, 
wondering  what  it  would  be  like  to  watch  the 
fire  flickering  on  the  new  hearth.  Then  he 
looked  over  toward  the  Hudson,  and  saw  the 
green  woods  on  Union  Hill  and  the  top  of  a 
white  sail  over  the  high  river-bank.  He 
hoped  that  no  one  would  build  a  large  house 
between  him  and  the  river. 

He  lingered  so  long  that  the  smoke  of  mid- 
day dinners  was  arising  from  Greenwich  Village 
when  he  turned  back  toward  town.  When  he 
reached  the  Commons  on  his  homeward  way 
"he  came  across  a  knot  of  idlers  who  were  wast- 


The  Story  of  a  New   York  House.        21 

ing  the  hour  of  the  noontide  meal  in  gaping  at 
the  unfinished  municipal  building. 

They  were  admiringly  critical.  One  man 
was  vociferously  enthusiastic. 

"  It's  a  marvellous  fine  building,  say  I,  sir  ! 
Worthy  of  the  classic  shades  of  antiquity.  If 
Europe  can  show  a  finer  than  that  will  be 
when  she's  done,  then,  in  7ny  opinion,  sir, 
Europe  is  doing  well." 

**  You  admire  the  architecture,  Mr.  Hug- 
gins  ? "  asked  Mr.  Dolph,  coming  up  behind 
him.  Mr.  Huggins  turned  around,  slightly  dis- 
concerted, and  assumed  an  amiability  of  man- 
ner such  as  can  only  be  a  professional  acquire- 
ment among  us  poor  creatures  of  human  nature. 

"  Ah,  Mr.  Dolph— Colonel,  I  should  say  !  I 
have  purposed  to  do  myself  the  honor  of  pre- 
senting myself  at  your  house  this  afternoon. 
Colonel  Dolph,  to  inquire  if  you  did  not  desire 
to  have  your  peruke /r/j-/^.  For  I  had  taken 
the  liberty  of  observing  you  in  conversation 
with  Madam  Des  Anges  this  morning,  in  her 
equipage,  and  it  had  occurred  to  me  that  pos- 
sibly the  madam  might  be  a-staying  w^ith  you." 

"  Madam    Des   Anges    does    not    honor  my 


22         The  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

house  this  time,  Huggins,"  returned  Mr.  Dolph, 
with  an  indulgent  Httle  laugh  ;  "  and  my  poor 
old  peruke  will  do  very  well  for  to-day.' 

There  was  a  perceptible  diminution  in  Mr. 
Huggins's  ardor;  but  he  was  still  suave.  ^ 

''  I  hope  the  madam  is  in  good  health,"  he 
remarked. 

''  She  is,  I  believe,"  said  Mr.  Dolph. 

''And  your  good  lady,  sir?  I  have  not  had 
the  pleasure  of  treating  Mrs.  Dolph  profession- 
ally for  some  time,  sir,  I " 

Mr.  Dolph  was  weary.  ''  I  don't  think  Mrs. 
Dolph  is  fond  of  the  latest  modes,  Huggins. 
But  here  comes  Mr.  Van  Riper.  Perhaps  he 
will  have  his  peruke /rz>/^." 

Mr.  Huggins  got  out  of  a  dancing-master's 
pose  with  intelligent  alacrity,  bade  Mr.  Dolph 
a  hasty  ''  Good-afternoon ! "  and  hurried  off 
toward  his  shop,  one  door  above  Wall  Street. 
Mr.  Van  Riper  did  not  like  "John  Richard 
Desbrosses  Huggins,  Knight  of  the  Comb." 

There  was  something  else  that  Mr.  Van 
Riper  did  not  like. 

"  Hullo,  Dolph ! "  he  hailed  his  friend. 
''  What's  this  I   heard  about  you   building  a 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.        23 

preposterous  tom-fool  of  a  town-house  out  by 
Greenwich  ?  Why  don't  you  hire  that  house 
that  Burr  had,  up  near  Lispenard's  cow-pas- 
ture, and  be  done  with  it?" 

Mr.  Dolph  seized  his  chance. 

''  It's  not  so  preposterous  as  all  that.  By 
the  way,  talking  of  Burr,  I  hear  from  Rich- 
mond that  he'll  positively  be  tried  next  week. 
Did  you  know  that  young  Irving — William's 
son,  the  youngest,  the  lad  that  writes  squibs- 
has  gone  to  Richmond  for  the  defence  ?" 

"  William  Irving's  son  might  be  in  better 
business,"  grunted  Mr.  Van  Riper,  for  a  mo- 
ment diverted.  ''  If  we'd  got  at  that  devil 
when  he  murdered  poor  Hamilton — 'fore  gad, 
we'd  have  saved  the  trouble  of  trying  him. 
Do  you  remember  when  we  was  for  going  to 
Philadelphia  after  him,  and  there  the  sly 
scamp  was  at  home  all  the  time  up  in  his  fine 
house,  a-sitting  in  a  tub  of  water,  reading 
French  stuff,  as  cool  as  a  cowcumber,  with  the 
whole  town  hunting  for  him  ?  "  Then  he  came 
back.  ''  But  that  house  of  yours.  You 
haven't  got  this  crazy  notion  that  New  York's 
going  to  turn  into  London  while  you  smoke 


24         The  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

your  pipe,  have  you  ?  You're  keeping  some  of 
your  seven  business  senses,  ain't  you  ?" 

'*  I  don't  know,"  Mr.  Dolph  mildly  defended 
his  hobby  ;  "  there  is  a  great  potentiality  of 
growth  in  this  city.  Here's  an  estimate  that 
John  Pintard  made  the  other  day " 

"  John  Pintard  !  He's  another  like  you  !  " 
said  Mr.  Van  Riper. 

"  Well,  look  at  it  for  yourself,"  pleaded  the 
believer  in  New  York's  future. 

Mr.  Van  Riper  took  the  neatly  written 
paper,  and  simply  snorted  and  gasped  as  he 
read  this : 

Statistical. 

By  the  numeration  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  city,  recently 
published,  the  progress  of  population  for  the  last  5  years  ap- 
pears to  be  at  the  rate  of  25  per  cent.  Should  our  city  con- 
tinue to  increase  in  the  same  proportion  during  the  present 
century,  the  aggregate  number  at  its  close  will  far  exceed  that 
of  any  other  city  in  the  Old  World,  Pekin  not  excepted,  as 
will  appear  from  the  following  table.  Progress  of  population 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  computed  at  the  rate  of  25  per  cent, 
every  5  years  : 

1805 75.770  1855 705.^^50 

1810 95,715  i860 882,062 

1815 110,390  1S65 1,102,577 

1820 147,987  1S70 1.378,221 

1825 184.923  1875 1.722,776 

1830 231,228  1880 2,153,470 

1835 289,035  1885 2,691,837 

1840 361,293  1890 3,364,796 

1845 451,616  1895 4,205,995 

1850 564*520  1900 5.257.493 


The  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House.        25 

When  he  had  read  it  through  he  was  a-quiv- 
ering,  crimson  with  that  rage  of  Conservative 
indignation  which  is  even  more  fervent  than 
the  flames  of  Radical  enthusiasm. 

'*Yes,"he  said;  '' there's  seventy-five  thou- 
sand people  in  this  town,  and  there'll  be  seven- 
ty-five thousand  bankrupts  if  this  lunacy  goes 
on.  And  there's  seventy-five  thousand  mag- 
gots in  your  brain,  and  seventy-five  thousand 
in  John  Pintard's  ;  and  if  you  two  live  to  see 
nineteen  hundred,  you'll  have  twice  five  million 
two  hundred  and  fifty-seven  thousand  four 
hundred  and  ninety-three — whatever  that  may 
be!  "  And  he  thrust  the  paper  back  at  Jacob 
Dolph,  and  made  for  the  Tontine  and  the  soci- 
ety of  sensible  men. 


The  house  was  built,  in  spite  of  Abram  Van 
Riper's  remonstrance.  It  had  a  stone  front, 
almost  flush  with  the  road,  and  brick  gable- 
ends,  in  each  one  of  which,  high  up  near  the 
roof,  stood  an  arched  window,  to  lift  an  eye- 
brow to  the  sun,  morning  and  evening.  But  it 
was  only  a  country-house,  after  all ;    and    the 


26         TJie  Story  of  a  Nciu  York  House. 

Dolphs  set  up  their  carriage  and  drove  out  and 
in,  from  June  to  September. 

There  was  a  garden  at  the  side,  where  Mrs. 
Dolph  could  have  the  flowers  her  heart  had 
yearned  after  ever  since  Jacob  Dolph  brought 
her  from  her  home  at  Rondout,  when  she  was 
seventeen. 


Strengthened  by  the  country  air — so  they 
said — young  Jacob  grew  clean  out  of  his  dame- 
school  days  and  into  and  out  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege, and  was  sent  abroad,  a  sturdy  youth,  to 
have  a  year's  holiday.  It  was  to  the  new 
house  that  he  came  back  the  next  summer, 
with  a  wonderful  stock  of  fine  clothes  and  of 
finer  manners,  and  with  a  pair  of  mustaches 
that  scandalized  everybody  but  Madam  Des 
Anges,who  had  seen  the  like  in  France  when  she 
visited  her  brother.  And  a  very  fine  young  buck 
was  young  Jacob,  altogether,  with  his  knowl- 
edge of  French  and  his  ignorance  of  Dutch, 
and  a  way  he  had  with  the  women,  and  an- 
other way  he  had  with  the  men,  and  his  heirship 
to  old  Jacob  Dolph 's  money  and  his  two  houses. 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        27 
For  they  stayed  in  the  old  house  until  1822. 


It  was  a  close,  hot  night  in  the  early  sum- 
mer ;  there  was  a  thick,  warm  mist  that  turned 
now  and  then  into  a  soft  rain ;  yet  every  win- 
dow in  the  Dolphs'  house  on  State  Street  was 
closed. 

It  had  been  a  hideous  day  for  New  York. 
From  early  morning  until  long  after  dark  had 
set  in,  the  streets  had  been  filled  with  fright- 
ened, disordered  crowds.  The  city  was  again 
stricken  with  the  old,  inevitable,  ever-recurring 
scourge  of  yellow  fever,  and  the  people  had 
lost  their  heads.  In  every  house,  in  every 
ofifice  and  shop,  there  was  hasty  packing,  mad 
confusion,  and  wild  flight.  It  was  only  a  ques- 
tion of  getting  out  of  town  as  best  one  might. 
Wagons  and  carts  creaked  and  rumbled  and 
rattled  through  every  street,  piled  high  with 
household  chattels,  up-heaped  in  blind  haste. 
Women  rode  on  the  swaying  loads,  or  walked 
beside  with  the  smaller  children  in  their  arms. 
Men  bore  heavy  burdens,  and  children  helped 
according  to  their  strength.     There  was  only 


28 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 


one  idea,  and  that  was  flight — from  a  pestilence 
whose  coming  might  have  been  prevented,  and 
whose  course  could  have  been  stayed.  To 
most  of  these  poor  creatures  the  only  haven 
seemed  to  be  Greenwich  Village ;  but  some 
sought  the  scattered  settlements  above  :  some 
crossed  to  Hoboken  ;  some  to  Bushwick ;  while 


i  %MMk:i%'- 


%*^ 


others  made  a  long  journey  to  Staten  Island, 
across  the  bay.  And  when  they  reached  their 
goals,  it  was  to  beg  or  buy  lodgings  anywhere 
and  anyhow  ;  to  sleep  in  cellars  and  garrets,  in 
barns  and  stables. 

The  panic  was  not  only  among  the  poor  and 
ignorant.  Merchants  were  moving  their  offices, 
and    even    the    Post    Office    and    the    Custom 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        29 

House  were  to  be  transferred  to  Greenwich. 
There  were  some  who  remained  faithful 
throughout  all,  and  who  labored  for  the 
stricken,  and  whose  names  are  not  even  written 
in  the  memory  of  their  fellow-men.  But  the 
city  had  been  so  often  ravaged  before,  that  at 
the  first  sight  there  was  one  mere  animal  im- 
pulse of  flight  that  seized  upon  all  alike. 

At  one  o'clock,  when  some  of  the  better 
streets  had  once  more  taken  on  their  natural 
quiet,  an  ox-cart  stood  before  the  door  of  the 
Dolphs'  old  house.  A  little  behind  it  stood 
the  family  carriage,  its  lamps  unlit.  The 
horses  stirred  uneasily,  but  the  oxen  waited 
in  dull,  indifferent  patience.  Presently  the 
door  opened,  and  tw^o  men  came  out  and  awk- 
wardly bore  a  plain  cofifin  to  the  cart.  Then 
they  mounted  to  the  front  of  the  cart,  hiding 
between  them  a  muffled  lantern.  They  wore 
cloths  over  the  lower  part  of  their  faces,  and 
felt  hats  drawn  low  over  their  eyes.  Something 
in  their  gait  showed  them  to  be  seafaring  men, 
or  the  like. 

Then  out  of  the  open  door  came  Jacob 
Dolph,  moving  with  a  feeble  shuffle  between 


30         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

his  son  and  his  old  negro  coachman — this  man 
and  his  wife  the  only  faithful  of  all  the  serv- 
ants. The  young  man  put  his  father  in  the  car- 
riage, and  the  negro  went  back  and  locked  the 
doors  and  brought  the  keys  to  his  young  master. 
He  mounted  to  the  box,  and  through  the  dark- 
ness could  be  seen  a  white  towel  tied  around 
his  arm — the  old  badge  of  servitude's  mourning. 

The  oxen  were  started  up,  and  the  two  ve- 
hicles moved  up  into  Broadway.  They  trav- 
elled with  painful  slowness ;  the  horses  had  to 
be  held  in  to  keep  them  behind  the  cart,  for 
the  oxen  could  be  only  guided  by  the  whip, 
and  not  by  word  of  mouth.  The  old  man 
moaned  a  little  at  the  pace,  and  quivered  when 
he  heard  the  distant  sound  of  hammers. 

"■  What  is  it  ?  "  he  asked,  nervously. 

''  They  are  boarding  up  some  of  the  streets," 
said  his  son ;  "  do  not  fear,  father.  Everything 
is  prepared ;  and  if  we  make  no  noise,  we  shall 
not  be  troubled." 

"  If  we  can  only  keep  her  out  of  the  Potter's 
pield— the  Potter's  Field!"  cried  the  father; 
'Til  thank  God — I'll  ask  no  more — I'll  ask  no 


The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House.        3 1 

And  then  he  broke  down  and  cried  a  httle, 
feebly,  and  got  his  son's  hand  in  the  darkness 
and  put  on  his  own  shoulder. 

It  was  nearly  two  when  they  came  to  St. 
Paul's  and  turned  the  corner  to  the  gate.  It 
was  dark  below,  but  some  frenzied  fools  were 
burning  tar-barrels  far  down  Ann  Street,  and 
the  light  flickered  on  the  top  of  the  church 
spire.  They  crossed  the  churchyard  to  where 
a  shallow  grave  had  been  dug,  half  way  down 
the  hill.  The  men  lowered  the  I  ody  into  it ; 
the  old  negro  gave  them  a  little  rouleau  of 
coin,  and  they  went  hurriedly  away  into  the 
night. 

The  clergyman  came  out  by  and  by,  with  the 
sexton  behind  him.  He  stood  high  up  above 
the  grave,  and  drew  his  long  cloak  about  him 
and  lifted  an  old  pomander-box  to  his  face. 
He  was  not  more  foolish  than  his  fellows;  in 
that  evil  hour  men  took  to  charms  and  to  say- 
ing of  spells.  Below  the  grave  and  apart,  for 
the  curse  rested  upon  them,  too,  stood  Jacob 
Dolph  and  his  son,  the  old  man  leaning  on  the 
arm  of  the  younger.  Then  the  clergyman  be- 
gan to   read  the  service   for  the  burial  of  the 


32  The  Story  of  a  .Vi-u'  York  House. 

dead,  over  the  departed  sister — and  wife  and 


mother.     He  spoke  low  ;  but  his  voice  seemed 


TJie  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        33 

to  echo  in  the  stillness.  He  came  forward  with 
a  certain  shrinking,  and  cast  the  handful  of 
dust  and  ashes  into  the  grave.  When  it  was 
done,  the  sexton  stepped  forward  and  rapidly 
threw  in  the  earth  until  he  had  filled  the  little 
hollow  even  with  the  ground.  Then,  with  fear- 
ful precaution,  he  laid  down  the  carefully  cut 
sods,  and  smoothed  them  until  there  was  no 
sign  of  what  had  been  done.  The  clergyman 
turned  to  the  two  mourners,  without  moving 
nearer  to  them,  and  lifted  up  his  hands.  The 
old  man  tried  to  kneel  ;  but  his  son  held  him 
up,  for  he  was  too  feeble,  and  they  bent  their 
heads  for  a  moment  of  silence.  The  clergy- 
man went  away  as  he  had  come  ;  and  Jacob 
Dolph  and  his  son  went  back  to  the  carriage. 
When  his  father  was  seated,  young  Jacob 
Dolph  said  to  the  coachman :  "  To  the  new 
house." 

The  heavy  coach  swung  into  Broadway,  and 
climbed  up  the  hill  out  into  the  open  country. 
There  were  lights  still  burning  in  the  farm- 
houses, bright  gleams  to  east  and  west,  but 
the  silence  of  the  damp  summer  night  hung 
over  the  sparse  suburbs,  and  the  darkness 
3 


34         The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 

seemed  to  grow  more  intense  as  they  drov^e 
away  from  the  city.  The  trees  by  the  road- 
side were  almost  black  in  the  gray  mist ;  the 
raw,  moist  smell  of  the  night,  the  damp  air, 
chilly  upon  the  high  land,  came  in  through  the 
carriage  windows.  Young  Jacob  looked  out 
and  noted  their  progress  by  familiar  landmarks 
on  the  road  ;  but  the  old  man  sat  with  his  head 
bent  on  his  new  black  stock. 

It  was  almost  three,  and  the  east  was  begin- 
ning to  look  dark,  as  though  a  storm  were  set- 
tling there  in  the  grayness,  when  they  turned 
down  the  straggling  street  and  drew  up  before 
the  great  dark  mass  that  was  the  new  house. 
The  carriage-wheels  gritted  against  the  loose 
stones  at  the  edge  of  the  roadway,  and  the 
great  door  of  the  house  swung  open.  The 
light  of  one  wavering  candle-flame,  held  high 
above  her  head,  fell  on  the  black  face  of  old 
Chloe,  the  coachman's  wife.  There  were  no 
candles  burning  on  the  high-pitched  stairway  ; 
all  was  dark  behind  her  in  the  empty  house. 

Young  Jacob  Dolph  helped  his  father  to  the 
ground,  and  between  the  young  man  and  the 
negro   old   Jacob   Dolph   wearily  climbed    the 


The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House.        35 

steps.  Chloe  lifted  her  apron  to  her  face,  and 
turned  to  lead  them  up  the  stair.  Her  hus- 
band went  out  to  his  horses,  shutting  the  door 
softly  after  him,  between  Jacob  Dolph's  old 
life  and  the  new  life  that  was  to  begin  in  the 
new  house. 


II. 

WHEN  young  Jacob  Dolph  came  down 
to  breakfast  the  next  morning  he 
found  his  father  waiting  for  him  in  the  break- 
fast-room. The  meal  was  upon  the  table. 
Old  Chloe  stood  with  her  black  hands  folded 
upon  her  white  apron,  and  her  pathetic  negro 
eyes  following  the  old  gentleman  as  he  moved 
wistfully  about  the  room. 

Father  and  son  shook  hands  in  silence,  and 
turned  to  the  table.  There  were  three  chairs 
in  their  accustomed  places.  They  hesitated  a 
half-second,  looking  at  the  third  great  arm- 
chair, as  though  they  waited  for  the  mistress 
of  the  house  to  take  her  place.  Then  they 
sat  down.  It  was  six  years  before  any  one 
took  that  third  chair,  but  every  morning 
Jacob  Dolph  the  elder  made  that  little  pause 
before  he  put  himself  at  the  foot  of   the  table. 

On  this  first  morning  there  was  very  little 
said  and  very  little  eaten.  But  when  they 
had  made   an  end  of  sitting  at   the  table  old 


The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House.        37 

Jacob  Dolph  said,  with  something  almost  Hke 
testiness  in  his  husky  voice: 

*' Jacob,  I  want  to  sell  the  house." 

"Father!" 


''The  old  house,  I  mean;  I  shall  never  go 
back  there." 

His  son  looked  at  him  with  a  further  in- 
quiry. He  felt  a  sudden  new^  apprehension. 
The  father  sat  back  in  his  easy-chair,  drum- 
ming on  the  arms  with  nervous  fingers. 


38         The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House. 

"  I  shall  never  go  back  there,"  he  said  again. 

"  Of  course  you  know  best,  sir,"  said  young 
Jacob,  gently  ;  "  but  would  it  be  well  to  be 
precipitate?  It  is  possible  that  you  may  feel 
differently  some  time " 

"There  is  no  'some  time'  for  me!"  broke 
in  the  old  man,  gripping  the  chair-arms, 
fiercely ;  "  my  time's  done — done,  sir  !  " 

Then  his  voice  broke  and  became  plain- 
tively kind. 

"There,  there!  Forgive  me,  Jacob,  boy. 
But  it's  true,  my  boy,  true.  The  world's  done, 
for  me ;  but  there's  a  world  ahead  for  you,  my 
son,  thank  God !  I'll  be  patient— I'll  be 
patient.  God  has  been  good  to  me,  and  I 
haven't  many  years  to  wait,  in  the  course  of 
nature." 

He  looked  vacantly  out  of  the  window,  try- 
ing to  see  the  unforeseen  with  his  mental 
sight. 

"While  I'm  here,  Jacob,  let  the  old  man 
have  his  way.  It's  a  whimsey ;  I  doubt  'tis 
hardly  rational.  But  I  have  no  heart  to  go 
home.  Let  me  learn  to  live  my  life  here. 
'Twill  be  easier." 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        39 

"But  do  you  think  it  necessary  to  sell,  sir? 
Could  you  not  hold  the  house?  Are  you  cer- 
tain that  you  would  like  to  have  a  stranger 
living  there  ?  " 

"  I  care  not  a  pin  who  lives  within  those 
four  walls  now,  sir!"  cried  the  elder,  with  a 
momentary  return  of  his  vehemence.  "  It's 
no  house  to  me  now.  Sell  it,  sir,  sell  it ! — if 
there's  any  one  will  give  money  for  it  at  a  time 
like  this.  Bring  every  stick  of  furniture  and 
every  stitch  of  carpet  up  here ;  and  let  me 
have  my  way,  Jacob — it  won't  be  for  long." 

He  got  up  and  went  blindly  out  of  the 
room,  and  his  son  heard  him  muttering,  ''  Not 
for  long — not  for  long,  now,"  as  he  wandered 
about  the  house  and  went  aimlessly  into  room 
after  room. 

Old  Jacob  Dolph  had  always  been  an  indul- 
gent parent,  and  none  kinder  ever  lived.  But 
we  should  hardly  call  him  indulgent  to-day. 
Good  as  he  was  to  his  boy,  it  had  always  been 
with  the  goodness  of  a  superior.  It  was  the 
way  of  his  time.  A  half-century  ago  the 
child's  position  was  equivocal.  He  lived  by 
the  grace   of  God  and  his   parents,  and  their 


40        TJic  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

duty  to  him  was  rather  a  duty  to  society,  born 
of  an  abstract  moraHty.  Love  was  given  him, 
not  as  a  right,  but  as  an  indulgence.  And 
young  Jacob  Dolph,  in  all  his  grief  and  anx- 
iety, was  guiltily  conscious  of  a  secret  thrill  of 
pleasure — natural  enough,  poor  boy  I — in  his 
sudden  elevation  to  the  full  dignity  of  man- 
hood, and  his  father's  abdication  of  the  head- 
ship of  the  house. 

A  little  later  in  the  day,  urged  again  by  the 
old  gentleman,  he  put  on  his  hat  and  went  to 
see  Abram  Van  Riper.  Mr.  Van  Riper  was 
now,  despite  his  objections  to  the  pernicious 
institution  of  country-houses,  a  near  neighbor 
of  the  Dolphs.  He  had  yielded,  not  to  fash- 
ion, but  to  yellow  fever,  and  at  the  very  first  of 
the  outbreak  had  bought  a  house  on  the  out- 
skirts of  Greenwich  Village,  and  had  moved 
there  in  unseemly  haste.  He  had  also  regis- 
tered an  unnecessarily  profane  oath  that  he 
would  never  again  live  within  the  city  limits. 

When  young  Jacob  Dolph  came  in  front  of 
the  low,  hip-roofed  house,  whose  lower  story 
of  undressed  stone  shone  with  fresh  white- 
wash, Mr.  Van  Riper  stood  on  his  stoop  and 


The  Story  of  a  Neiu  York  House.        41 

checked  his  guest  at  the  front  gate,  a  dozen 
yards  away.  From  this  distance  he  jabbed  his 
big  gold-headed  cane  toward  the  young  man, 
as  though  to  keep  him  off. 


^li  r 


^'  Stay  there,  sir  —  you,  sir,  you  Jacob 
Dolph  !  "  he  roared,  brandishing  the  big  stick. 
"  Stand  back,  I  tell  you  !  Don't  come  in,  sir! 
Good-day,    sir  —  good-day,     good-day,     good- 


42         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

day  I  "  (This  hurried  excursus  was  in  defer- 
ence to  a  sense  of  social  duty.)  ''  Keep  away, 
confound  you,  keep  away  —  consume  your 
body,  sir,  stay  where  you  are  !  " 

''  I'm  not  coming  any  nearer,  Mr.  Van 
Riper,"  said  Jacob  Dolph,  with  a  smile  which 
he  could  not  help. 

"  I  can't  have  you  in  here,  sir,"  went  on  Mr. 
Van  Riper,  with  no  abatement  of  his  agitation. 
"  I  don't  want  to  be  inhospitable  ;  but  I've  got 
a  wife  and  a  son,  sir,  and  you're  infectious — 
damn  it,  sir,  you're  infectious!  " 

"  I'll  stay  where  I  am,  Mr.  Van  Riper,"  said 
young  Jacob,  smiling  again.  ''  I  only  came 
with  a  message  from  my  father." 

''  With  a  what  ?  "  screamed  Mr.  Van  Riper. 
"  I  can't  have — oh,  ay,  a  message  !  Well,  say 
it  then  and  be  off,  like  a  sensible  youngster. 
Consume  it,  man,  can't  you  talk  farther  out  in 
the  street  ?  " 

When  Mr.  Van  Riper  learned  his  visitor's 
message,  he  flung  his  stick  on  the  white  peb- 
bles of  the  clam-shell-bordered  path,  and  swore 
that  he,  Van  Riper,  was  the  only  sane  man  in 
a  city  of  lunatics,  and  that  if  Jacob  Dolph  tried 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        43 

to  carry  out  his  plan  he  should  be  shipped 
straightway  to  Bloomingdale. 

But  young  Jacob  had  something  of  his 
father's  patience,  and,  despite  the  publicity  of 
the  interview,  he  contrived  to  make  Mr.  Van 
Riper  understand  how  matters  stood.  To  tell 
the  truth,  Van  Riper  grew  quite  sober  and 
manageable  when  he  realized  that  his  extrav- 
agant imputation  of  insanity  was  not  so  wide 
of  the  mark  as  it  might  have  seemed,  and  that 
there  was  a  possibility  that  his  old  friend's 
mind  might  be  growing  weak.  He  even  vent- 
ured a  little  way  down  the  path  and  permit- 
ted Jacob  to  come  to  the  gate  while  they  dis- 
cussed the  situation. 

''Poor  old  Dolph  —  poor  old  Jacob!"  he 
groaned.  '■'  We  must  keep  him  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  sharks,  that  we  must !  "  He  did 
not  see  young  Jacob's  irrepressible  smile  at 
this  singular  extension  of  metaphor.  ''  He 
mustn't  be  allowed  to  sell  that  house  in  open 
market — never,  sir!  Confound  it,  I'll  buy  it 
myself  before  I'll  see  him  fleeced  !  " 

In  the  end  he  agreed,  on  certain  strict  con- 
ditions of  precaution,  to  see  young  Jacob  the 


44         The  Story  of  a  Nciu  York  House. 

next  day  and  discuss  ways  and  means  to  save 
the  property. 

''Come  here,  sir,  at  ten,  and  I'll  see  you  in 
the  sitting-room,  and  we'll  find  out  what  we 
can  do  for  your  father — curse  it,  it  makes  me 
feel  bad  ;  by  gad,  it  does !  Ten  to-morrow, 
then — and  come  fumigated,  young  man,  don't 
you  forget  that — come  fumigated,  sir!" 

It  was  Van  Riper  who  bought  the  property 
at  last.  He  paid  eighteen  thousand  dollars  for 
it.  This  was  much  less  than  its  value  ;  but  it 
was  more  than  any  one  else  would  have  given 
just  at  that  time,  and  it  was  all  that  Van  Riper 
could  afford.  The  transaction  weighed  on  the 
purchaser's  mind,  however.  He  had  bought 
the  house  solely  out  of  kindness,  at  some  mo- 
mentary inconvenience  to  himself ;  and  yet  it 
looked  as  though  he  were  taking  advantage  of 
his  friend's  weakness.  Abram  Van  Riper  was 
a  man  who  cultivated  a  clear  conscience,  of  a 
plain,  old-fashioned  sort,  and  the  necessity  for 
self-examination  was  novel  and  disagreeable  to 
him. 

*  ^  *  4f  -Jfr  -x-  * 

Life  lived  itself  out  at  Jacob  Dolph's  new 


The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House.        45 

house  whether  he  hked  it  or  not.  The  furni- 
ture came  up-town,  and  was  somewhat  awk- 
wardly disposed  about  its  new  quarters ;  and 
in  this  unhomehke  combination  of  two  homes 
old  Mr.  Dolph  sat  himself  down  to  finish  his 
stint  of  life.  He  awoke  each  morning  and 
found  that  twenty-four  hours  of  sleep  and 
waking  lay  before  him,  to  be  got  through  in 
their  regular  order,  just  as  they  were  lived 
through  by  men  who  had  an  interest  in  living. 
He  went  to  bed  every  night,  and  crossed  off 
one  from  a  tale  of  days  of  which  he  could  not 
know  the  length. 

Of  course  his  son,  in  some  measure,  saved 
his  existence  from  emptiness.  He  was  proud 
of  young  Jacob — fond  and  proud.  He  looked 
upon  him  as  a  prince  of  men,  which  he  was, 
indeed.  He  trusted  absolutely  in  the  young 
man,  and  his  trust  was  well  placed.  And  he 
knew  that  his  boy  loved  him.  But  he  had  an 
old  man's  sad  consciousness  that  he  was  not 
necessary  to  Jacob — that  he  was  an  adjunct,  at 
the  best,  not  an  integral  part  of  this  younger 
existence.  He  saw  Jacob  the  younger  gradually 
recovering  from  his  grief  for  the  mother  who 


4-6         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

had  left  them  ;  and  he  knew  that  even  so  would 
Jacob  some  day  recover  from  grief  when  his 
father  should  have  gone. 

He  saw  this;  but  it  is  doubtful  if  he  felt  it 
acutely.  Nature  was  gradually  dulling  his  sen- 
sibilities with  that  wonderful  anaesthetic  of 
hers,  which  is  so  much  kinder  to  the  patient 
than  it  is  to  his  watching  friends.  After  the 
first  wild  freak  of  selling  the  house,  he  showed, 
for  a  long  time,  no  marked  signs  of  mental  im- 
pairment, beyond  his  lack  of  interest  in  the 
things  which  he  had  once  cared  about — even  in 
the  growth  of  the  city  he  loved.  And  in  a 
lonely  and  unoccupied  man,  sixty-five  years  of 
age,  this  was  not  unnatural.  It  was  not  un- 
natural, even,  if  now  and  then  he  was  whim- 
sical, and  took  odd  fancies  and  prejudices.  But 
nevertheless  the  work  was  going  on  within  his 
brain,  little  by  little,  day  by  day. 

He  settled  his  life  into  an  almost  mechanical 
routine,  of  which  the  most  active  part  was  his 
daily  walk  down  into  the  city.  At  first  he 
would  not  go  beyond  St.  Paul's  churchyard ; 
but  after  awhile  he  began  to  take  timorous 
strolls  among  the   old   business  streets  where 


The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House.        47 

his  life  had  been  passed.  He  would  drop  into 
the  offices  of  his  old  friends,  and  would  read 
the  market  reports  with  a  pretence  of  great  in- 
terest, and  then  he  would  fold  up  his  specta- 
cles and  put  them  in  their  worn  leather  case, 


and  walk  slowly  out.  He  was  always  pleased 
when  one  of  the  younger  clerks  bowed  to  him 
and  said,  ''  Good-day,  Mr.  Dolph  !  " 

It  was  in  the  fourth  year  of  his  widowhood 
that  he  bethought  himself  of  young  Jacob's 
need  of  a  more  liberal  social  life  than  he  had 
been  leading.     The  boy  went  about  enough ; 


48         The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 

he  was  a  good  deal  of  a  beau,  so  his  father 
heard  ;  and  there  was  no  desirable  house  in  the 
town  that  did  not  welcome  handsome,  amiable 
young  Dolph.  But  he  showed  no  signs  of  tak- 
ing a  wife  unto  himself,  and  in  those  days  the 
bachelor  had  only  a  provisional  status  in 
society.  He  was  expected  to  wed,  and  the 
whole  circle  of  his  friends  chorused  yearly  a 
deeper  regret  for  the  lost  sheep,  as  time  made 
that  detestable  thing,  an  "old  bachelor,"  of 
him. 

Young  Jacob  was  receiving  many  courtesies 
and  was  making  no  adequate  return.  He  felt 
it  himself,  but  he  was  too  tender  of  his  father's 
changeless  grief  to  urge  him  to  open  the  great 
empty  house  to  their  friends.  The  father, 
however,  felt  that  it  was  his  duty  to  sacrifice 
his  own  desire  for  solitude,  and,  when  the  win- 
ter of  1825  brought  home  the  city's  wandering 
children  — there  were  not  so  many  of  the  wan- 
dering sort  in  1825 — he  insisted  that  young 
Jacob  should  give  a  dinner  to  his  friends 
among  the  gay  young  bachelors.  That  would 
be  a  beginning;  and  if  all  went  well  they  would 
have  an  old  maiden  aunt  from  Philadelphia  to 


The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House.        49 

spend  the  winter  with  them,  and  help  them  to 
give  the  dinner  parties  which  do  not  encourage 
bachelorhood,  but  rather  convert  and  reform 
the  coy  celibate. 

The  news  went  rapidly  through  the  town. 
The  Dolph  hospitality  had  been  famous,  and 
this  was  taken  for  a  signal  that  the  Dolph 
doors  were  to  open  again.  There  was  great 
excitement  in  Hudson  Street  and  St.  John's 
Park.  Maidens,  bending  over  their  tambour- 
frames,  working  secret  hopes  and  aspirations 
in  with  their  blossoming  silks  and  worsted, 
blushed,  with  faint  speculative  smiles,  as 
they  thought  of  the  vast  social  possibilities 
of  the  mistress  of  the  grand  Dolph  house. 
Young  bachelors,  and  old  bachelors,  too,  rolled 
memories  of  the  Dolph  Madeira  over  longing 
tongues. 

The  Dolph  cellar,  too,  had  been  famous,  and 
just  at  that  period  New  Yorkers  had  a  fine  and 
fanciful  taste  in  wine,  if  they  had  any  self- 
respect  whatever. 

I  think  it  must  have  been  about  then  that 
Mr.  Dominick  Lynch  began-  his  missionary 
labors  among  the  smokers  and  drinkers  of  this 


50         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

city  ;  he  who  bought  a  vineyard  in  France  and 
the  Vuelta  Abajo  plantations  in  Cuba,  solely 
to  teach  the  people  of  his  beloved  New  York 
what  was  the  positively  proper  thing  in  wines 
and  cigars.  If  it  was  not  then,  it  could  not 
have  been  much  later  that  Mr.  Dolph  had  got 
accustomed  to  receiving,  every  now  and  then, 
an  unordered  and  unexpected  consignment  of 
wines  or  Havana  cigars,  sent  up  from  Little 
Dock  Street — or  what  we  call  Water  Street 
now,  the  lower  end  of  it.  And  I  am  sure  that 
he  paid  Mr.  Lynch's  bill  with  glowing  pride ; 
for  Mr.  Lynch  extended  the  evangelizing  hand 
of  culture  to  none  but  those  of  pre-eminent 
social  position. 

It  was  to  be  quite  a  large  dinner ;  but  it  was 
noticeable  that  none  of  the  young  men  who 
were  invited  had  engagements  of  regrettable 
priority. 

Jacob  Dolph  the  elder  looked  more  inter- 
ested in  life  than  he  had  looked  in  four  years 
when  he  stood  on  the  hearthrug  in  the  draw- 
ing-room and  received  his  son's  guests.  He 
was  a  bold  figure  among  all  the  young  men, 
not  only  because  he  was  tall  and  white-haired, 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House,        51 

and  for  the  moment  erect,  and  of  a  noble  and 
gracious  cast  of  countenance,  but  because  he 
clung  to  his  old  style  of  dress — his  knee- 
breeches  and  silk  stockings,  and  his  long  coat, 
black,  for  this  great  occasion,  but  of  the  '*  shad- 


belly  "  pattern.  He  wore  his  high  black  stock, 
too,  and  his  snow-white  hair  was  gathered  be- 
hind into  a  loose  peruke. 

The  young  men  wore  trousers,  or  panta- 
loons, as  they  mostly  called  them,  strapped  un- 
der their  varnished  boots.      Their  coats  were 


52         TJic  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 

cut  like  our  dress-coats,  if  you  can  fancy  them 
with  a  wild  amplitude  of  collar  and  lapel. 
They  wore  large  cravats  and  gaudy  waistcoats, 
and  two  or  three  of  them  who  had  been  too 
much  in  England  came  with  shawls  or  rugs 
around  their  shoulders. 

They  were  a  fashionable  lot  of  people,  and 
this  was  a  late  dinner,  so  they  sat  down  at 
six  o'clock  in  the  great  dining-room — not  the 
little  breakfast-room — with  old  Jacob  Dolph  at 
one  end  of  the  table  and  young  Jacob  Dolph 
at  the  other. 

It  was  a  pleasant  dinner,  and  the  wine  was 
good,  and  the  company  duly  appreciative, 
although  individually  critical. 

Old  Jacob  Dolph  had  on  his  right  an  agree- 
able French  count,  just  arrived  in  New  York, 
who  was  creating  a  furor;  and  on  his  left  was 
Mr.  Philip  Waters,  the  oldest  of  the  young 
men,  who,  being  thirty-five,  had  a  certain  con- 
sideration for  old  age.  But  old  Jacob  Dolph 
was  not  quite  at  his  ease.  He  did  not  under- 
stand the  remarkable  decorum  of  the  young 
men.  He  himself  belonged  to  the  age  of 
''  bumpers  and   no  heel  taps,"  and  nobody  at 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        53 

his  board  to-night  seemed  to  care  about  drink- 
ing bumpers,  even  out  of  the  poor,  Httle,  new- 
fangled claret-glasses,  that  held  only  a  thimble- 
ful apiece.  He  had  never  known  a  lot  of  gen- 
tlemen, all  by  themselves,  to  be  so  discreet. 
Before  the  evening  was  over  he  became  aware 
of  the  fact  that  he  was  the  only  man  who  was 
proposing  toasts,  and  then  he  proposed  them 
no  more. 

Things  had  changed  since  he  was  a  young 
buck,  and  gave  bachelor  parties.  Why,  he 
could  remember  seeing  his  own  good  father — 
an  irreproachable  gentleman,  surely — lock  the 
door  of  his  dining-room  on  the  inside — ay,  at 
just  such  a  dinner  as  this — and  swear  that  no 
guest  of  his  should  go  out  of  that  room  sober. 
And  his  word  had  been  kept.  Times  were 
changing.  He  thought,  somehow,  that  these 
young  men  needed  more  good  port  in  their 
veins. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  festivities  he  grew  si- 
lent. He  gave  no  more  toasts,  and  drank  no 
more  bumpers,  although  he  might  safely  have 
put  another  bottle  or  two  under  his  broad 
waistcoat.     But   he  leaned  back  in   his  chair, 


54         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

and  rested  one  hand  on  the  table,  playing 
with  his  wineglass  in  an  absent-minded  way. 
There  was  a  vague  smile  on  his  face ;  but 
every  now  and  then  he  knit  his  heavy  gray 
brows  as  if  he  were  trying  to  work  out  some 
problem  of  memory.  Mr.  Philip  Waters  and 
the  French  count  were  talking  across  him  ; 
he  had  been  in  the  conversation,  but  he  had 
dropped  out  some  time  before.  At  last  he 
rose,  with  his  brows  knit,  and  pulled  out  his 
huge  watch,  and  looked  at  its  face.  Every- 
body turned  toward  him,  and,  at  the  other  end 
of  the  table,  his  son  half  rose  to  his  feet.  He 
put  the  watch  back  in  his  pocket,  and  said,  in 
his  clear,  deep  voice:  '^Gentlemen,  I  think  we 
will  rejoin  the  ladies." 

There  was  a  little  impulsive  stir  around  the 
table,  and  then  he  seemed  to  understand  that 
he  had  wandered,  and  a  frightened  look  came 
over  his  face.  He  tottered  backward,  and 
swayed  from  side  to  side.  Mr.  Philip  Waters 
and  the  Frenchman  had  their  arms  behind 
him  before  he  could  fall,  and  in  a  second  or  two 
he  had  straightened  himself  up.  He  made  a 
stately,  tremulous  apology  for  what  he  called 


Tlie  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House.        55 

his  "  infelicitous  absence  of  mind,"  and  then  he 
marched  off  to  bed  by  himself,  suffering  no  one 
to  go  with  him. 

A  little  while  later  in  the  evening,  Mr. 
Philip  Waters,  walking  down  Broadway  (which 
thoroughfare  was  getting  to  have  a  fairly  sub- 
urban look),  informed  the  French  count  that 
in  his,  Mr.  Waters's,  opinion,  young  Jacob 
Dolph  would  own  that  house  before  long. 

Young  Jacob  Dolph's  father  insisted  on  re- 
petitions of  the  bachelor  dinner,  but  he  never 
again  appeared  in  the  great  dining  -  room. 
When  there  was  a  stag  party  he  took  his  own 
simple  dinner  at  five  o'clock  and  went  to  bed 
early,  and  lay  awake  until  his  son  had  dis- 
missed the  last  mild  reveller,  and  he  could  hear 
the  light,  firm,  young  footstep  mounting  the 
stairs  to  the  bedroom  door  opposite  his  own. 


That  was  practically  the  end  of  it  for  old 
Jacob  Dolph.  The  maiden  aunt,  who  had 
been  invited,  was  notified  that  she  could  not 
come,  for  Mr.  Dolph  was  not  well  enough  to 
open  his  house  that   winter.     But  it  was  del- 


56         The  Story  of  a  Nczv  York  House. 

icatcly  intimated  to  her  that  if  he  grew  worse 
she  might  still  be  sent  for,  and  that  alleviated 
her  natural  disappointment.  She  liked  to  give 
parties  ;  but  there  is  also  a  chastened  joy  for 
some  people  in  being  at  the  head  of  a  house  of 
mourning. 

Old  Mr.  Dolph  grew  no  worse  physically,  ex- 
cept that  he  was  inclined  to  make  his  daily  walks 
shorter,  and  that  he  grew  fonder  of  sitting  at 
home  in  the  little  breakfast-room,  where  the  sun 
shone  almost  all  day  long,  and  v/here  Mrs.  Dolph 
had  once  been  fond  of  coming  to  sew.  Her  little 
square  work-table  of  mahogany  stood  there 
still.  There  the  old  gentleman  liked  to  dine, 
and  often  he  dined  alone.  Young  Jacob  was  in 
great  demand  all  over  town,  and  his  father 
knew  that  he  ought  to  go  out  and  amuse  him- 
self. And  the  young  man,  although  he  was 
kind  and  loving,  and  never  negligent  in  any 
ofifice  of  respect  or  affection,  had  that  strong 
youth  in  him  which  makes  it  impossible  to  sit 
every  day  of  the  week  opposite  an  old  man 
whose  world  had  slipped  by  him,  who  knew 
nothing  of  youth  except  to  love  it  and  wonder 
at  it, 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        57 

In  the  morning,  before  he  went  out  for  his 
daily  tramp  into  town,  old  Jacob  would  say  to 
young  Jacob : 

"  I  suppose  I  shall  see  you  at  dinner,  my 
boy?" 

And  young  Jacob  would  say,  *'  Yes,  sir,"  or 
"■  No,  sir,  I  think  not.  Mrs.  Des  Anges  was  in 
town  yesterday,  and  she  asked  me  to  ride  up 
there  to-day  and  dine.  And  Diana"  (Diana 
was  his  big  black  mare)  "  needs  a  little  work ; 
she's  getting  badly  out  of  condition.  So, 
if  it  doesn't  matter  to  you,  sir,  I'll  just 
run  up  there  and  get  back  before  the  moon 
sets." 

And  the  father  would  answer  that  it  didn't 
matter,  and  would  send  his  best  respects, 
through  Mrs.  Des  Anges  at  King's  Bridge,  to 
Madam  Des  Anges  at  New  Rochelle ;  and  at 
night  he  would  sit  down  alone  to  his  dinner  in 
the  breakfast-room,  served  by  old  Chloe,  who 
did  her  humble  best  to  tempt  his  appetite, 
which  was  likely  to  be  feeble  when  Master 
Jacob  was  away. 

Master  Jacob  had  taken  to  riding  to  King's 
Bridge  of  late.     Sometimes  he  would  start  out 


58         TJic  Story  of  a  Nczv  York  House, 

early  in  the  morning,  just  about  the  time 
when  young  Van  Riper  was  plodding  by  on 
his  way  to  the  shop.  Young  Van  Riper  liked 
to  be  at  the  shop  an  hour  earlier  than  his 
father.  Old  Mr.  Dolph  was  ahvays  up,  on 
these  occasions,  to  see  his  son  start  off.  He 
loved  to  look  at  the  boy,  in  his  English  riding- 
boots  and  breeches,  astride  of  black  Diana, 
who  pranced  and  curvetted  up  the  unpaved 
road.  Young  Jacob  had  her  well  in  hand,  but 
he  gave  her  her  head  and  let  her  play  until 
they  reached  Broadway,  where  he  made  her 
strike  a  rattling  regular  pace  until  they  got 
well  up  the  road;  and  then  she  might  walk 
up  Bloomingdale  way  or  across  to  Hickory 
Lane. 

If  he  went  up  by  the  east  he  was  likely  to 
dismount  at  a  place  which  you  can  see  now, 
a  little  west  and  south  of  McComb's  Dam 
Bridge,  where  there  is  a  bit  of  a  rocky  hollow, 
and  a  sort  of  horizontal  cleft  in  the  rocks  that 
has  been  called  a  cave,  and  a  water-washed 
stone  above,  whose  oddly  shaped  depression  is 
called  an  Indian's  footprint.  He  would  stop 
there,  because  right   in  that   hollow,  as  I   can 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House,        59 

tell  you  myself,  grew,  in  his  time  as  in  mine, 
the  first  of  the  spring  flowers.  It  was  full  of 
violets  once,  carpeted  fairly  with  the  pale,  del- 
icate petals. 

And  up  toward  the  west,  on  a  bridlepath 
between  the  hills  and  the  river,  as  you  came 
toward  Fort  Washington,  going  to  Tubby 
Hook — we  are  refined  nowadays,  and  Tubby 
Hook  is  "  Inwood  " — Heaven  help  it ! — there 
were  wonderful  flowers  in  the  woods.  The 
wind-flowers  came  there  early,  nestling  under 
the  gray  rocks  that  sparkled  with  garnets ;  and 
there  bloomed  great  bunches  of  Dutchman's- 
breeches — not  the  thin  sprays  that  come  in 
the  late  New  England  spring,  but  huge  clumps 
that  two  men  could  not  enclose  with  linked 
hands  ;  great  masses  of  scarlet  and  purple,  and 
— mostly — of  a  waxy  white,  with  something 
deathlike  in  their  translucent  beauty.  There, 
also,  he  would  wade  into  the  swamps  around  a 
certain  little  creek,  lured  by  a  hope  of  the 
jack-in-the-pulpit,  to  find  only  the  odorous  and 
disappointing  skunk-cabbage.  And  there  the 
woods  were  full  of  the  aroma  of  sassafras,  and 
of   birch  tapped  by  the   earliest  woodpecker, 


6o         Tlic  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

whose  drumming  throbbed  through  the  young 
man's  deep  and  tender  musing. 

And — strange  enough  for  a  young  man  who 
rides  only  to  exercise  his  black  mare — he  never 
came  out  of  those  woods  without  an  armful  of 
columbine  or  the  like.  And — strange  enough 
for  any  young  man  in  this  world  of  strange 
things — when  he  sat  down  at  the  table  of  Mrs. 
Des  Anges,  in  her  pleasant  house  near  Harlem 
Creek,  Miss  Aline  Des  Anges  wore  a  bunch  of 
those  columbines  at  her  throat.  Miss  Aline 
Des  Anges  was  a  slim  girl,  not  very  tall,  with 
great  dark  eyes  that  followed  some  people  with 
a  patient  wistfulness. 

**•?«•■?«•         ^         *         -x- 

One  afternoon,  in  May  of  1827,  young  Jacob 
found  his  father  in  the  breakfast-room,  and  said 
to  him : 

"  Father,  I  am  going  to  marry  Aline  Des 
Anges." 

His  father,  who  had  been  dozing  in  the  sun 
by  the  south  window,  raised  his  eyes  to  his 
son's  face  with  a  kindly,  blank  look,  and  said, 
thoughtfully  : 

"  Des  Anges.     That's  a  good  family,  Jacob, 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        6i 

and  a  wonderful  woman,  Madam  Des  Anges. 
Is  she  alive  yet  ?  " 


When  Madam  Des  Anges,  eighty  years  old, 
and  strong  and  well,  heard  of  this,  she  said  : 

*'  It  is  the  etiquette  of  France  that  one  fam- 
ily should  make  the  proposition  to  the  other 
family.  Under  the  circumstances  /will  be  the 
family  that  proposes.  I  will  make  a  precedent. 
The  Des  Anges  make  precedents." 

And  she  rode  down  to  the  Dolph  house  in 
the  family  carriage — the  last  time  it  ever  went 
out — and  made  her  "proposition"  to  Jacob 
Dolph  the  elder,  and  he  brightened  up  most 
wonderfully,  until  you  would  have  thought 
him  quite  his  old  self,  and  he  told  her  what  an 
honor  he  esteemed  the  alliance,  and  paid  her 
compliments  a  hundred  words  long. 

And  in  May  of  the  next  year.  King's  Bridge 
being  out  of  the  question,  and  etiquette  being 
waived  at  the  universal  demand  of  society,  the 
young  couple  stood  up  in  the  drawing-room  of 
the  Dolph  house  to  be  wed. 

The  ceremony  was  fashionably   late — seven 


62         TJie  Story  of  a  Neiv  York  House. 

o'clock  in  the  evening.  And  after  it  was  over, 
and  the  young  couple  had  digested  what  St. 
Paul  had  to  say  about  the  ordinance  of  wed- 
lock, and  had  inaudibly  promised  to  do  and  be 
whatever  the  domine  required  of  them,  they 
were  led  by  the  half-dozen  groomsmen  to  the 
long  glass  between  the  front  windows,  and 
made  to  stand  up  there,  with  their  faces  to- 
ward the  company,  and  to  receive  the  congrat- 
ulations of  a  mighty  procession  of  friends,  who 
all  used  the  same  formulas,  except  the  very 
old  ones,  who  were  delicately  indelicate. 

The  bridegroom  wore  a  blue  coat  and  trou- 
sers, and  a  white  satin  waistcoat  embroidered 
with  silver-thread  roses  and  lilies-of-the-valley. 
The  coat  was  lined  with  cream-colored  satin, 
quilted  in  a  most  elaborate  pattern  ;  and  his 
necktie  was  of  satin,  too,  with  embroidered 
ends.  His  shirt  was  a  miracle  of  fine  linen. 
As  to  the  bride,  she  was  in  white  satin  and 
lace,  and  at  her  throat  she  wore  a  little  bunch 
of  late  white  columbines,  for  which  Mr.  Jacob 
Dolph  the  younger  had  scoured  the  woods 
near  Fort  Washington. 

There  was  to  be  a  grand  supper,  later;  and 


The  Story  of  a  Neiv  York  House.        63 

the  time  of  waiting  was  filled  up  with  fashion- 
able conversation. 

That  dear  old  doctor,  who  was  then  a  dear 
young  doctor,  and  whose  fine  snow-crowned 
face  stood  in  later  years  as  an  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  all  that  was  brave,  kindly,  self- 
sacrificing,  and  benevolent  in  the  art  of  heal- 
ing, was  seated  by  Madam  Des  Anges,  and  was 
telling  her,  in  stately  phrase,  suited  to  his 
auditor,  of  a  certain  case  of  heroism  with  which 
he  had  met  in  the  course  of  his  practice.  Mr. 
Blank,  it  appeared,  had  been  bitten  by  a  dog 
that  was  supposed  to  be  possessed  by  the  ra- 
bies. For  months  he  had  suffered  the  agonies 
of  mental  suspense  and  of  repeated  cauterizing 
of  the  flesh,  and  during  those  months  had  con- 
cealed his  case  from  his  wife,  that  he  might 
spare  her  pain — suffering  in  silence  enough  to 
unnerve  most  men. 

""  It  was  heroic,"  said  Dr.  F. 

Madam  Des  Anges  bowed  her  gray  head  ap- 
provingly. 

''  I  think,"  she  said,  "  his  conduct  shows  him 
to  be  a  man  of  taste.  Had  he  informed  his 
wife  of  his  condition,  she  might  have  experi- 


64         The  Story  of  a  Nczu  York  House. 

enced  the  most  annoying  solicitude ;  and  I  am 
informed  that  she  is  a  person  of  feeble  char- 
acter." 

The  doctor  looked  at  her,  and  then  down  at 
the  floor;  and  then  he  asked  her  if  she  did  not 
hope  that  Almaviva  Lynch  would  bring  Garcia 
back  again,  with  that  marvellous  Italian  opera, 
which,  as  he  justly  observed,  captivated  the 
eye,  charmed  the  ear,  and  awakened  the  pro- 
foundest  emotions  of  the  heart. 

And  at  that  Madam  Des  Anges  showed 
some  animation,  and  responded  that  she  had 
listened  to  some  pleasing  operas  in  Paris  ;  but 
she  did  not  know  that  they  were  of  Italian  ori- 
gin. 

But  if  Madam  Des  Anges  was  surprised  to 
learn  that  any  good  thing  could  come  out  of 
any  other  country  than  France,  there  was  an- 
other surprise  in  store  for  her,  and  it  did  not 
long  impend. 

It  was  only  a  little  while  after  this  that  her 
grandson-in-law,  finding  her  on  his  right  and 
Abram  Van  Riper  on  his  left — he  had  served 
out  his  time  as  a  statue  in  front  of  the  mirror 
— thought    it   proper   to  introduce  to   Madam 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        65 

Des  Anges  his  father's  old  friend,  Mr.  Van 
Riper.  Mr.  Van  Riper  bowed  as  low  as  his 
waistcoat  would  allow,  and  courteously  ob- 
served that  the  honor  then  accorded  him  he 
had  enjoyed  earlier  in  the  evening  through  the 
kind  offices  of  Mr.  Jacob  Dolph,  senior. 

Madam  Des  Anges  dandled  her  quizzing- 
glass  as  though  she  meant  to  put  it  up  to  her 
eye,  and  said,  in  a  weary  way  : 

"  Mr. — ah — Van  Riper  must  pardon  me.  I 
have  not  the  power  of  remembering  faces  that 
some  people  appear  to  have  ;  and  my  eyes — 
my  eyes  are  not  strong." 

Old  Van  Riper  stared  at  her,  and  he  turned 
a  turkey-cock  purple  all  over  his  face,  down  to 
the  double  chin  that  hung  over  his  white  neck- 
erchief. 

''  If  your  ladyship  has  to  buy  spectacles,"  he 
sputtered,  ''  it  needn't  be  on  my  account." 

And  he  stamped  off  to  the  sideboard  and 
tried  to  cool  his  red-hot  rage  with  potations 
of  Jamaica  rum.  There  his  wife  found  him. 
She  had  drawn  near  when  she  saw  him  talking 
with  the  great  Madam  Des  Anges,  and  she 
had  heard,  as  she  stood  hard  by  and  smiled  un- 


66         TJie  Story  of  a  New  York  House, 

obtrusively,  the  end  of  that  brief  conversation. 
Her  face,  too,  was  flushed — a  more  fiery  red 
than  her  flame-colored  satin  dress. 

She  attacked  him  in  a  vehement  whisper. 

"Van  Riper,  what  are  you  doing?  I'd  al- 
most believe  you'd  had  too  much  liquor,  if  I 
didn't  know  you  hadn't  had  a  drop.  Will  you 
ever  learn  what  gentility  is?  D'ye  want  us  to 
live  and  die  like  toads  in  a  hole  ?  Here  you 
are  with  your  ill  manners,  ofl"ending  Madam 
Des  Anges,  that  everybody  knows  is  the  best 
of  the  best,  and  there's  an  end  of  all  likelihood 
of  ever  seeing  her  and  her  folks,  and  two  nieces 
unmarried  and  as  good  girls  as  ever  was,  and 
such  a  connection  for  your  son,  who  hasn't 
been  out  of  the  house  it's  now  twelve  months 
— except  to  this  very  wedding  here,  and  you've 
no  thought  of  your  family  when  once  you  lose 
that  mighty  fine  temper  of  yours,  that  you're 
so  prodigious  proud  of;  and  where  you'll  end 
us,  Van  Riper,  is  more  than  I  know,  I  vow." 

But  all  she  could  get  out  of  Van  Riper  was: 

"  The  old  harridan !  She'll  remember  my 
name  this  year  or  two  to  come,  I'll  warrant  ye  !  " 

*  V  ^V  H<  -vv  %  Ht 


TJic   Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House.        6^ 

It  was  all  over  at  last,  and  old  black  Julius, 
who  had  been  acting  as  a  combination  of  link- 
boy  and  major-domo  at  the  foot  of  the  front 
steps,  extinguished  his  lantern,  and  went  to 
bed,  some  time  before  a  little  white  figure 
stole  up  the  stairs  and  slipped  into  a  door 
that  Chloe — black    Chloe — held  open. 

And  the  next  day  Jacob  Dolph  the  elder 
handed  the  young  bride  into  the  new  travel- 
ling-carriage with  his  stateliest  grace,  and  Mr, 
and  Mrs.  Jacob  Dolph,  junior,  rolled  proudly 
up  the  road,  through  Bloomingdale,  and  across 
King's  Bridge — stopping  for  luncheon  at  the 
Des  Anges  house — over  to  New  Rochelle, 
where  the  feminine  head  of  the  house  of  Des 
Anges  received  them  at  her  broad  front  door, 
and  where  they  had  the  largest  room  in  her 
large,  old-fashioned  house,  for  one  night. 
Madam  Des  Anges  wished  to  keep  them 
longer,  and  was  authoritative  about  it.  But 
young  Jacob  settled  the  question  of  suprem- 
acy then  and  there,  with  the  utmost  courtesy, 
and  Madam  Des  Anges,  being  great  enough  to 
know  that  she  was  beaten,  sent  ofT  the  victor 
on  the  morrow,  with  his  trembling  accomplice 


68         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House, 

by  his  side,  and  wished  them  boji  voyage  as 
heartily  as  she  possibly  could. 

So  they  started  afresh  on  their  bridal  tour, 
and  very  soon  the  travelling  carriage  struck  the 
old  Queen  Anne's  Road,  and  reached  Yonkers. 
And  there,  and  from  there  up  to  Fishkill,  they 
passed  from  one  country-house  to  another, 
bright  particular  stars  at  this  dinner  and  at 
that  supper,  staying  a  day  here  and  a  night 
there,  and  having  just  the  sort  of  sociable, 
public,  restless,  rattling  good  time  that  neither 
of  them  wanted. 

At  every  country-house  where  they  stayed  a 
day  they  were  pressed  to  stay  a  week,  and  al- 
ways the  whole  neighborhood  was  routed  out 
to  pay  them  social  tribute.  The  neighbors 
came  in  by  all  manner  of  conveyances.  One 
family  of  aristocrats  started  at  six  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  and  travelled  fourteen  miles 
down  the  river  in  an  ox-cart,  the  ladies  sit- 
ting bolt  upright,  with  their  hair  elaborately 
dressed  for  the  evening's  entertainment.  And 
once  a  regular  assembly  ball  was  given  in  their 
honor,  at  a  town-hall,  the  use  of  which  was 
granted    for    the    purpose    specified  by  unani- 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        69 

mous  vote  of  the  town  council.  Of  course, 
they  had  a  very  good  time;  but  then  there 
are  various  sorts  of  good  times.  Perhaps  they 
might  have  selected  another  sort  for  them- 
selves. 

There  is  a  story  that,  on  their  way  back, 
they  put  up  for  several  days  at  a  poor  little 
hostelry  under  the  hills  below  Peekskill,  and 
spent  their  time  in  wandering  through  the 
woods  and  picking  wild-flowers ;  but  it  lacks 
confirmation,  and  I  should  be  sorry  to  believe 
that  two  well-brought-up  young  people  would 
prefer  their  own  society  to  the  unlimited  hos- 
pitality of  their  friends  in  the  country. 

Old  Jacob  Dolph,  at  home,  had  the  great 
house  all  to  himself;  and,  although  black 
Chloe  took  excellent  care  of  his  material  com- 
forts, he  was  restless  and  troubled.  He  took 
most  pleasure  in  a  London  almanac,  on  whose 
smudgy  pages  he  checked  off  the  days.  Let- 
ters came  as  often  as  the  steamboat  arrived 
from  Albany,  and  he  read  them,  after  his  fash- 
ion. It  took  him  half  the  week  to  get  through 
one  missive,  and  by  that  time  another  had  ar- 
rived.    But   I   fear  he  did  not  make  much  out 


yo         The  Story  of  a  Xezv  York  House. 

of  them.  Still,  they  gave  him  one  pleasure. 
He  endorsed  them  carefully  with  the  name  of 
the  writer,  and  the  date  of  receipt,  and  then  he 
laid  them  away  in  his  desk,  as  neatly  as  he  had 
filed  his  business  letters  in  his  old  days  of  active 
life. 

Every  night  he  had  a  candle  alight  in  the 
hallway;  and  if  there  were  a  far-off  rumble  of 
carriage-wheels  late  at  night,  he  would  rise 
from  his  bed — he  was  a  light  sleeper,  in  his  age 
— and  steal  out  into  the  corridor,  hugging  his 
dressing-robe  about  him,  to  peer  anxiously 
down  over  the  balusters  till  the  last  sound  and 
the  last  faint  hope  of  his  son's  return  had  died 
away. 

And,  indeed,  it  was  late  in  July  when  the 
travelling-carriage  once  more  drew  up  in  front 
of  the  Dolph  house,  and  old  Julius  opened  the 
door,  and  old  Mr.  Dolph  welcomed  them,  and 
told  them  that  he  had  been  very  lonely  in  their 
absence,  and  that  their  mother — and  then  he 
remembered  that  their  mother  was  dead,  and 
went  into  the  house  with  his  head  bowed  low. 


III. 


ST.  JOHN'S  PARK  and  Hudson  Street  and 
all  well-bred  New  York,  for  that  matter, 
had  its  fill  of  the  Dolph  hospitality  the  next 
winter.  It  was  dinner  and  ball  and  rout  and 
merry-making  of  one  sort  or  another,  the  sea- 
son through.  The  great  family  sleighs  and  the 
little  bachelor  sleighs  whirred  and  jingled  up 
to  the  Dolph  door  surely  two,  and  sometimes 
four,  evenings  in  every  week,  and  whirred  and 
jingled  away  again  at  intensely  fashionable 
hours,  such  as  plain  folk  used  for  sleeping. 

They  woke  up  Abram  Van  Riper,  did  the  rev- 
ellers northward  bound  to  country  houses  on 
the  river-side,  and,  lying  deep  in  his  feather- 
bed, he  directed  his  rumbling  imprecations  at 
the  panes  of  glass,  that  sparkled  with  frost  in 
the  mild  moonlight. 

*'  Oh,  come,  maidens,  come,  o'er  the  blue,  rolling  wave, 
The  lovely  should  still  be  the  care  of  the  brave — 
Trancadillo,  trancadillo,  trancadillo,  dillo,  dillo,  dillo  ! " 


72        The  Story  of  a   New    York  House. 

sang  the  misguided  slaves  of  fashion,  as  they 
sped  out  of  hearing. 

•' Trancadillo  !  "  rumbled  Mr.  Van  Riper. 
*'  I'd  like  to  trancadillo  them,  consume  'em  !  " 
and  then  he  cursed  his  old  friend's  social  circle 
for  a  parcel  of  trumpery  fools ;  and  Mrs.  Van 
Riper,  lying  by  his  side,  sighed  softly  with 
chastened  regret  and  hopeless  aspiration. 

But  everybody  else — everybody  who  was 
anybody — blessed  the  Dolphs  and  the  Dolphs' 
cellar,  and  their  man-servant  and  their  maid- 
servant, and  their  roasted  ox  and  their  saddle 
of  venison,  and  the  distinguished  stranger  who 
was  within  their  gates;  and  young  Mrs.  Dolph 
was  made  as  welcome  as  she  made  others. 

For  the  little  girl  with  the  great  dark  eyes 
took  to  all  this  giddiness  as  naturally  as  possi- 
ble— after  her  quiet  fashion.  The  dark  eyes 
sparkled  with  subdued  pleasure  that  had  no 
mean  pride  in  it  when  she  sat  at  the  head  of 
her  great  mahogany  table,  and  smiled  at  the 
double  row  of  bright  faces  that  hemmed  in  the 
gorgeous  display  of  the  Dolph  silver  and  china 
and  fine  linen.  And  it  was  wonderful  how 
charming  were    the  famous    Des  Anges  man- 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.       73 

ners,  when  they  were  softened  and  sweetened 
by  so  much  grace  and  beauty. 

**  Who  would  have  thought  she  had  it  in 
her?"  said  the  young  ladies  down  in  St.  John's 
Park.  ''  You  remember  her,  don't  you,  what  a 
shy  little  slip  of  a  thing  she  was  when  we  were 
at  old  Dumesnil's  together?  Who  was  it  used 
to  say  that  she  had  had  the  life  grandmothered 
out  of  her  ?" 

"  Fine  little  creature,  that  wife  of  Dolph's," 
said  the  young  men  as  they  strolled  about  in 
Niblo's  Garden.  ''  Dolph  wouldn't  have  had 
the  road  all  to  himself  if  that  old  dragon  of  a 
grandmother  had  given  the  girl  half  a  chance. 
'Gad,  she's  an  old  grenadier  !  They  say  that 
Dolph  had  to  put  her  through  her  facings  the 
day  after  he  was  married,  and  that  he  did  it 
in  uncommon  fine  style,  too." 

''  He's  a  lucky  devil,  that  Dolph,"  the 
younger  ones  would  sigh.  ''  Nothing  to  do, 
all  the  money  he  wants,  pretty  wife,  and  the 
best  wine  in  New  York !  I  wish  my  old  man 
would  cut  the  shop  and  try  to  get  an  educa- 
tion in  wine." 

Their  devotion  to  the  frivolities  of   fashion 


74        The  Story  of  a  New    York  House, 

notwithstanding,  the  young  Dolphs  were  a  lov- 
ing, and,  in  a  way,  a  domestic  couple.  Of 
course,  everybody  they  knew  had  to  give  them 
a  dinner  or  a  ball,  or  pay  them  some  such  so- 
cial tribute,  and  there  were  a  myriad  calls  to 
be  received  and  returned  ;  but  they  found  time 
for  retired  communings,  even  for  long  drives 
in  the  sleigh  which,  many  a  time  in  young 
Jacob  Dolph's  bachelor  days,  had  borne  the 
young  man  and  a  female  companion — not  al- 
ways the  same  companion,  either — up  the 
Bloomingdale  Road.  And  in  the  confidences 
of  those  early  days  young  Jacob  learned  what 
his  gentle  little  wife  told  him — without  herself 
realizing  the  pathos  of  it — the  story  of  her 
crushed,  unchildlike  youth,  loveless  till  he 
came,  her  prince,  her  deliverer.  Dolph  under- 
stood it  ;  he  had  known,  of  course,  that  she 
could  not  have  been  happy  under  the  regime 
of  Madam  Des  Anges ;  but  when  he  heard  the 
simple  tale  in  all  its  monotonous  detail,  and 
saw  spread  out  before  him  this  poor  young 
life,  with  its  thousand  little  disappointments, 
submissions,  abnegations,  and  undeserved  pun- 
ishments and  needless  restrictions,  a  generous 


TJie  Story  of  a  Neiv    York  House.        75 

rage  glowed  in  his  heart,  and  perhaps  sprang 
once  in  a  while  to  his  indiscreet  lips ;  and  out 
of  this  grew^  a  deeper  and  maturer  tenderness 
than  his  honeymoon  love  for  the  sweet  little 
soul  that  he  had  at  first  sought  only  for  the 
dark  eyes  through  which  it  looked  out  upon 
its  joyless  world. 

It  is  unwise  to  speak  in  profane  language,  it 
is  injudicious  to  speak  disrespectfully  of  old 
age,  yet  the  Recording  Angel,  if  he  did  not  see 
fit  to  let  a  tear  fall  upon  the  page,  perchance 
found  it  convenient  to  be  mending  his  pen 
when  young  Jacob  Dolph  once  uttered  certain 
words  that  made  his  wife  cry  out  : 

"  Oh,  Jacob,  don't,  please  don't.  She  didn't 
mean  it !  " 

This  is  only  a  supposition.  Perhaps  Madam 
Des  Anges  really  had  meant  well.  But  oh, 
how  much  happier  this  world  would  be  if  all 
the  people  who  *'  mean  well  "  and  do  ill  would 
only  take  to  meaning  ill  and  doing  well ! 


Jacob  Dolph  the  elder  took  but  a  doubtful 
part  in  all  the  festivities.     The  cloud  that  had 


jd         The  Story  of  a  Neiv  York  House. 

hung  dimly  over  him  had  begun  to  show  Httle 
rifts  ;  but  the  dark  masses  between  the  rifts 
were  thicker  and  heavier    than  ever.     It    was 


the  last  brief  convulsive  struggle  of  the  patient 
against  the  power  of  the  anaesthetic,  when  the 
nervous  hand  goes  up  to  put  the  cloth  away 
from  the  mouth,  just  before  the  work  is  done 
and  consciousness  slips  utterly  away,  and  life 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.        jj 

is  no  more  for  the  sufferer,  though  his  heart 
beat  and  the  breath  be  warm  between  his 
lips. 

When  he  was  bright  he  was  almost  like  his 
old  self,  and  these  delusive  periods  came  often- 
est  when  he  met  some  old  friend,  or  in  quiet 
morning  hours  when  his  daughter — so  he  al- 
ways called  her— sat  at  his  feet  in  the  sunny 
breakfast-room,  and  sewed  and  listened,  or  per- 
haps read  to  him  from  Scott's  latest  novel. 

He  may  have  had  some  faint  sub-conscious- 
ness of  his  condition,  for  although  he  took  the 
deepest  interest  in  the  balls  and  the  dinners, 
he  would  never  appear  before  his  son's  guests 
except  when  he  was  at  his  best  and  brightest. 
But  he  loved  to  sit,  withdrawn  in  a  corner, 
watching  the  young  life  that  fluttered  through 
the  great  rooms,  smiling  to  himself,  and  gently 
pleased  if  some  old  crony  sought  him  out  and 
talked  of  old  times— the  older  the  times  were, 
the  better  he  remembered  them.  Indeed,  he 
now  recalled  some  things  that  he  had  not 
thought  of  since  his  far-off  boyhood. 

In    truth,    the   younger    Dolphs    often    had 
small    heart    in    their   festal    doings.     But  the 


78         TJlc  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

medical  science  of  the  day,  positive,  self-satis- 
fied, and  blinded  by  all  manner  of  tradition, 
gave  them,  through  its  ministers,  cruelly  false 
hopes  of  the  old  man's  ultimate  recovery. 
Besides,  they  could  not  well  order  things  other- 
wise. The  extravagant  hospitality  of  the  day 
demanded  such  ceremonial,  and  to  have  abated 
any  part  of  it  would  only  have  served  to  grieve 
and  to  alarm  the  object  of  their  care. 

The  whole  business  was  a  constant  pride  and 
joy  to  old  Mr.  Jacob  Dolph.  When  there  was 
a  dinner  to  be  given,  he  would  follow  Aline  as 
she  went  about  the  house  superintending  the 
preparations  of  her  servants,  in  her  flowered 
apron  of  black  silk,  with  her  bunch  of  keys — 
honest  keys,  those,  a  good  four  inches  long, 
with  tongues  as  big  as  a  domino — jingling  at 
her  side.  He  would  himself  overlook  the  mak- 
ing ready  of  the  wines,  and  give  oft-repeated 
instructions  as  to  the  proper  temperature  for 
the  port,  and  see  that  the  champagne  was  put 
on  ice  in  tne  huge  octagonal  cellaret  in  the 
dining-room  corner.  And  when  all  was  ready, 
as  like  as  not  he  would  kiss  Aline  on  the  fore- 
head, and  say : 


Mons'us   gran'   dinneh,  Seh  !  " 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        79 

*'  I  have  a  headache  to-night,  my  dear,  and 
I  think  I  shall  take  m}'  dinner  in  my  room." 

And  he  would  go  feebly  up  stairs,  and  when 
old  Julius,  who  always  waited  upon  him, 
brought  up  his  tray,  he  would  ask  : 

"Is  it  a  fine  dinner,  Julius?  Did  everybody 
come?  " 

And  Julius  would  invariably  reply,  with  pro- 
found African  dignity: 

"  Mons'us  gran'  dinneh,  seh  !  'E  fines'  din- 
neh  I  eveh  witness',  seh !  I  have  stood  behin' 
you'  chai',  seh,  this  thutty  y'ah,  an'  I  neveh  see 
no  such  a  gran'  dinneh,  Misteh  Do'ph,  seh !  " 

"  Except  the  dinner  we  gave  Mr.  Hamilton,  in 
State  Street,  Julius,"  the  old  man  would  put  in. 

*'  -£";ircep'  that,  seh,"  Julius  would  gravely 
reply  :  *'  that  was  a  pol-litical  dinneh,  seh ;  an', 
of  co'se,  a  pol'litical  dinneh — "  an  expressive 
pause — "'  but  this  he'  is  sho'ly  a  mons'us  fine 
dinneh,  seh." 


His  bodily  vigor  was  unimpaired,  however, 
and  except  that  his  times  of  entire  mental 
clearness  grew  fewer  and  briefer  as  the  months 


8o         The  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House. 

went  on,  there  was  little  change  in  the  old  gen- 
tleman when  the  spring  of  1829  came.  He 
was  not  insane,  he  was  not  idiotic,  even  at  the 
worst.  It  seemed  to  be  simply  a  premature 
old  age  that  clouded  his  faculties.  He  forgot 
many  things,  he  was  weakly  absent-minded, 
often  he  did  not  recognize  a  familiar  face,  and  he 
seemed  ever  more  and  more  disinclined  to  think 
and  to  talk.  He  liked  best  to  sit  in  silence, 
seemingly  unconscious  of  the  world  about  him; 
and  if  he  w^as  aroused  from  his  dreamy  trance, 
his  wandering  speech  would  show  that  his  last 
thought — and  it  might  have  entered  his  mind 
hours  before,  at  the  suggestion  of  some  special 
event — was  so  far  back  in  the  past  that  it  dealt 
with  matters  beyond  his  son's  knowledge. 

He  was  allowed  to  do  as  he  pleased,  for  in 
the  common  affairs  of  daily  life  he  seemed  to 
be  able  to  care  for  himself,  and  he  plaintively 
resented  anything  that  looked  like  guardian- 
ship. So  he  kept  up  his  custom  of  walking 
down  into  the  city,  at  least  as  far  as  St.  Paul's. 
It  was  thought  to  be  safe  enough,  for  he  was 
a  familiar  figure  in  the  town,  and  had  friends 
at  every  turn. 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.        8 1 

But  one  afternoon  he  did  not  return  in  time 
for  dinner.  Young  Jacob  was  out  for  his  after- 
noon ride,  which  that  day  had  taken  him  in 
the  direction  of  the  good  doctor's  house.  And 
when  he  had  reached  the  house,  he  found  the 
doctor  likewise  mounted  for  a  ride.  The  doc- 
tor was  going  up  to  Bond  Street — the  Dolphs' 
quarter  was  growing  fashionable  already — to 
look  at  a  house  near  Broadway  that  he  had 
some  thoughts  of  buying,  for  he  was  to  be 
married  the  coming  winter.  So  they  had  rid- 
den back  together,  and  after  a  long  examina- 
tion of  the  house,  young  Jacob  had  ridden  off 
for  a  gallop  through  the  country  lanes  ;  and  it 
was  five  o'clock,  and  dinner  was  on  the  table, 
when  he  came  to  his  father's  house  and 
learned  from  tearful  Aline  that  his  father  was 
missing. 

The  horse  was  at  the  stable  door  when  young 
Jacob  mounted  him  once  more  and  galloped 
off  to  Bond  Street,  where  he  found  the  doctor 
just  ready  to  turn  down  the  Bowery  ;  and  they 
joined  forces  and  hurried  back,  and  down 
Broadway,  inquiring  of  the  people  who  sat  on 
their  front   stoops — it  was  a  late  spring  even- 


82         The  Story  of  a  Nczv    York  House. 

ing,  warm  and  fair — if  they  had  seen  old  Mr. 
Dolph  that  day. 

Many  had  seen  him  as  he  went  down  ;  but 
no  one  could  remember  that  the  old  gentleman 
had  c<!>me  back  over  his  accustomed  path  At 
St.  Paul's,  the  sexton  thought  that  Mr.  Dolph 
had  prolonged  his  walk  down  the  street.  Fur- 
ther on,  some  boys  had  seen  him,  still  going 
southward.  The  searchers  stopped  at  one  or 
two  of  the  houses  where  he  might  have  called ; 
but  there  was  no  trace  of  him.  It  was  long 
since  old  Jacob  Dolph  had  made  a  formal  call. 

But  at  Bowling  Green  they  were  hailed  by 
Mr.  Philip  Waters,  w^ho  came  toward  them 
with  more  excitement  in  his  mien  than  a 
young  man  of  good  society  often  exhibited. 

"  I  w^as  going  for  a  carriage,  Dolph,"  he 
said  :  "  your  father  is  down  there  in  the  Bat- 
tery Park,  and  I'm  afraid — I'm  afraid  he's  had 
a  stroke  of  paralysis." 

They  hurried  down,  and  found  him  lying  on 
the  grass,  his  head  on  the  lap  of  a  dark-skinned, 
ear-ringed  Spanish  sailor.  He  had  been  seen 
to  fall  from  the  bench  near  by,  another  maritime 
man  in  the  crowd  about  him  explained. 


TJie  Story  of  a  New    York  House.        83 

*'  It  was  only  a  minit  or  two  ago,"  said  the 
honest  seafarer,  swelled  with  the  importance 
that  belongs  to  the  narrator  of  a  tale  of  acci- 
dent and  disaster.  ''  He  was  a-settin'  there, 
had  been  for  two  hours  'most,  just   a-starin'  at 


them  houses  over  there,  and  all  of  a  sudden 
chuck  forward  he  went,  right  on  his  face.  And 
then  a  man  come  along  that  knowed  him,  and 
said  he'd  go  for  a  kerridge,  or  I'd  'a'  took 
him  on  my  sloop — she's  a-layin'  here  now,  with 
onions   from  Weathersfield — and   treated   him 


84        The  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House. 

well ;  I  see  he  wa'n't  no  disrespectable  charac- 
ter. Here,  Pedro,  them's  the  old  man's  folks 
— let  'em  take  him.  A-settin'  there  nigh  on 
two  hours,  he  was,  just  a-studyin'  them 
houses.     B'long  near  here?" 

Young  Jacob  had  no  words  for  the  Connec- 
ticut captain.  Waters  had  arrived,  with  some- 
body's carriage,  confiscated  on  the  highway, 
and  they  gently  lifted  up  the  old  gentleman 
and  set  off  homeward.  They  were  just  in  time, 
for  Waters  had  been  the  earliest  of  the  ev^en- 
ing  promenaders  to  reach  the  Battery.  It  was 
dinner  hour — or  supper  hour  for  many — and 
the  park  was  given  up  to  the  lounging  sailors 
from  the  river-side  streets. 

The  doctor's  face  was  dark. 

"  No,  it  is  not  paralysis,"  he  said.  "  Let  us 
proceed  at  once  to  your  own  home,  Mr.  Dolph. 
In  view  of  what  I  am  now  inclined  to  consider 
his  condition,  I  think  it  would  be  the  most  ad- 
visable course." 

He  was  as  precise  and  exact  in  his  speech, 
even  then,  as  he  was  later  on,  when  years  had 
given  an  innocent,  genial  pomposity  to  his  de- 
livery of  his  rounded  sentences. 


The  Story  of  a  New   York  House.        85 

They  put  old  Jacob  Dolph  to  bed  in  the 
room  which  he  had  always  occupied,  in  his 
married  as  in  his  widowed  days.  He  never 
spoke  again ;  that  day,  indeed,  he  hardly 
moved.  But  on  the  next  he  stirred  uneasily, 
as  though  he  were  striving  to  change  his  posi- 
tion. The  doctor  bled  him,  and  they  shifted 
him  as  best  they  could,  but  he  seemed  ho 
more  comfortable.  So  the  doctor  bled  him 
again  ;  and  even  that  did  no  good. 

About  sunset.  Aline,  who  had  watched  over 
him  with  hardly  a  moment's  rest,  left  the  room 
for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  to  listen  to  what  the 
doctors  had  to  say — there  were  four  of  them 
in  the  drawing-room  below.  When  she  and 
her  husband  entered  the  sick-room  again,  the 
old  man  had  moved  in  his  bed.  He  was  lying 
on  his  side,  his  face  to  the  windows  that 
looked  southward,  and  he  had  raised  himself  a 
little  on  his  arm.  There  was  a  troubled  gaze 
in  his  eyes,  as  of  one  who  strains  to  see  some- 
thing that  is  unaccountably  missing  from  his 
sight.  He  turned  his  head  a  little,  as  though 
to  listen.  Thus  gazing,  with  an  inward  and 
spiritual  vision  only,  at  the  bay  that  his  eyes 


86        The  Story  of  a  New   York  House. 

might  never  again  see,  and  listening  to  the 
waves  whose  cadence  he  should  hear  no  more, 
the  troubled  look  faded  into  one  of  inscrutable 
peace,  and  he  sank  back  into  the  hollow  of  his 
son's  arm  and  passed  away. 


The  next  time  that  the  doctor  was  in  the 
house  it  was  of  a  snowy  night  a  few  days  after 
New  Year's  Day.  It  was  half-past  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  Jacob  Dolph — no  longer 
Jacob  Dolph  the  younger — had  been  pacing 
furiously  up  and  down  the  long  dining-room 
— that  being  the  longest  room  in  the  house 
— when  the  doctor  came  down  stairs,  and  ad- 
dressed him  with  his  usual  unruffled  precision  : 

*'  I  will  request  of  you,  Dolph,  a  large  glass 
of  port.  I  need  not  suggest  to  you  that  it  is 
unnecessary  to  stint  the  measure,  for  the  hos- 
pitality of  this  house  is " 

"  How  is  she,  doctor?  For  God's  sake,  tell 
me — is  she — is  she " 

"The  hospitality  of  this  house  is  prover — " 
the  precise  doctor  recommenced. 

"  Damn  the  hospitality  !  "  cried  Jacob  Dolph  : 


The  Story  of  a  Neiv   York  House.       87 

''  I  mean — oh,  doctor — tell  me — is  anything 
wrong?  " 

"  Should  I  request  of  you  the  cup  of  amity 
and  geniality,  Mr.  Dolph,  were  there  cause  for 
anything  save  rejoicing  in  this  house?"  de- 
manded the  physician,  with  amiable  severity. 
'*  I  had  thought  that  my  words  would  have 
conveyed " 

"  It's  all  over?  " 

*'  And  bravely  over  !  "  And  the  doctor  nod- 
ded his  head  with  a  dignified  cheerfulness. 

"  And  may  I  go  to  her  ?  " 

"  You  may,  sir,  after  you  have  given  me  my 
glass  of  port.     But  remember,  sir " 

Dolph  turned  to  the  sideboard,  grasped  a 
bottle  and  a  glass,  and  thrust  them  into  the 
doctor's  hand,  and  started  for  the  door. 

"  But  remember,  sir,"  went  on  the  unper- 
turbed physician,  ''you  must  not  agitate  or  ex- 
cite her.  A  gentle  step,  a  tranquil  tone,  and 
a  cheerful  and  encouraging  address,  brief  and 
affectionate,  will  be  all  that  is  permitted." 

Dolph  listened  in  mad  impatience,  and  was 
over  the  threshold  before  the  doctor's  peremp- 
tory call  brought  him  back. 


88 


TJic  Story  of  a  Nciv    York  House. 


"What    is    it    now?"    he    demanded,    impa- 
tiently. 

The  doctor  looked  at  him  with   a  gaze    of 

wonder  and   re- 


proach. 

"  It  is  a  male 
child,  sir,"  he 
said. 

Jacob  Dolph 
crept  up  the 
1' •—  stairs  on  tiptoe. 
As  he  paused 
for  a  moment 
i  n  front  of  a 
door  at  the 
head,  he  heard 
the  weak,  spas- 
modic   w^ail     of 


another  Dolph. 


*' There's  no  help  for  it — I've  got  to  do  it," 
said  Jacob  Dolph. 

It  was  another  wintry  morning,  just  after 
breakfast.     The  snow  was  on  the  ground,  and 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.        89 

the  sleigh-bells  up  in  Broadway  sent  down  a 
faint  jingling.  Ten  winters  had  come  and 
gone,  and  Mr.  Dolph  was  as  comfortably  stout 
as  a  man  should  be  who  is  well  fed  and  forty. 
He  stood  with  his  back  to  the  fire,  pulling  at 
his  whiskers — which  formed  what  was  earlier 
known  as  a  Newgate  collar — with  his  right 
thumb  and  forefinger.  His  left  thumb  was 
stuck  in  the  armhole  of  his  flowered  satin 
waistcoat,  black  and  shiny. 

Opposite  him  sat  a  man  of  his  own  age, 
clean-shaven  and  sharp-featured.  He  had 
calm,  somewhat  cold,  gray  eyes,  a  deliberate, 
self-contained  manner  of  speaking,  and  a  pallid, 
dry  complexion  that  suited  with  his  thin  feat- 
ures. His  dress  was  plain,  although  it  was 
thoroughly  neat.  He  had  no  flowered  satin 
waistcoat ;  but  something  in  his  bearing  told 
you  that  he  was  a  man  who  had  no  anxiety 
about  the  narrow  things  of  the  counting-room; 
who  had  no  need  to  ask  himself  how  much 
money  was  coming  in  to-morrow.  And  at  the 
same  time  you  felt  that  every  cent  of  whatever 
might  be  to-morrow's  dues  would  find  its  way 
to   his  hands   as  sureh/  as  the  representative 


90        Tlic  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

figures  stood  on  his  ledger's  page.  It  was 
young  Mr.  Van  Riper — but  he,  too,  had  lost 
his  right  to  that  title,  not  only  because  of  his 
years,  but  because,  in  the  garret  of  the  house 
in  Greenwich  Village,  a  cobweb  stretched  from 
one  of  the  low  beams  to  the  head  of  old 
Abram  Van  Riper's  great  walking-stick,  which 
stood  in  the  corner  where  it  had  been  placed, 
with  other  rubbish,  the  day  after  Abram  Van 
Riper's  funeral. 

"  I  should  not  advise  it,  Dolph,  if  it  can  be 
helped,"  Mr.  Van  Riper  observed,  thoughtfully. 

"  It  can't  be  helped." 

**  I  can  give  you  your  price,  of  course,"  Van 
Riper  went  on,  with  deliberation  ;  "  but  equally 
of  course,  it  won't  be  anything  like  what  the 
property  will  bring  in  the  course  of  a  few 
years." 

Dolph  kicked  at  the  hearthrug,  as  he  an- 
swered, somewhat  testily  : 

''  I'm  not  making  a  speculation  of  it." 

Mr.  Van  Riper  was  unmoved. 

*' And  I'm  not  making  a  speculation  of  you, 
either,"  he  said,  calmly:  "  I  am  speaking  only 
for  your  own  benefit,  Dolph." 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House,        91 

Mr.  Dolph  put  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
strode  to  the  window  and  back  again,  and  then 
said,  with  an  uneasy  Httle  laugh  : 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  Van  Riper;  you're  quite 
right,  of  course.  The  fact  is,  I've  got  to  do  it. 
I  must  have  the  money,  and  I  must  have  it 
now." 

Mr.  Van  Riper  stroked  his  sharp  chin. 

''  Is  it  necessary  to  raise  the  money  in  that 
particular  way?  You  are  temporarily  embar- 
rassed— I  don't  wish  to  be  intrusive — but  why 
not  borrow  what  you  need,  and  give  me  a 
mortgage  on  the  house?" 

Ten  years  had  given  Jacob  Dolph  a  certain 
Acridity ;  but  at  this  he  blushed  a  hot  red. 

''  Mortgage  on  the  house?  No,  sir,"  he  said, 
with  emphasis. 

*'  Well,  any  other  security,  then,"  was  Van 
Riper's  indifferent  amendment. 

Again  Jacob  Dolph  strode  to  the  window 
and  back  again,  staring  hard  at  the  carpet,  and 
knitting  his  brows. 

Mr.  Van  Riper  waited  in  undisturbed  calm 
until  his  friend  spoke  once  more. 

"  I   might   as  well   tell   you   the   truth,  Van 


92         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

Riper,"  he  said,  at  last ;  "  I've  made  a  fool  of 
myself.  I've  lost  money,  and  I've  got  to 
pocket  the  loss.  As  to  borrowing,  I've  bor- 
rowed all  I  ought  to  borrow.  I  woiit  mort- 
gage the  house.  This  sale  simply  represents 
the  hole  in  my  capital." 

Something  like  a  look  of  surprise  came  into 
Mr.  Van  Riper's  wintry  eyes. 

"  It's  none  of  my  business,  of  course,"  he 
observed ;  ''  but  if  you  haven't  any  objection 
to  telling  me " 

''  What  did  it  ?  What  does  for  everybody 
nowadays?  Western  lands  and  Wall  Street — 
that's  about  the  whole  story.  Oh,  yes,  I  know 
— I  ought  to  have  kept  out  of  it.  But  I 
didn't.  I  was  nothing  better  than  a  fool  at 
such  business.     I'm  properly  punished." 

He  sighed  as  he  stood  on  the  hearthrug, 
his  hands  under  his  coat-tails,  and  his  head 
hanging  down.  He  looked  as  though  many 
other  thoughts  were  going  through  his  mind 
than  those  which  he  expressed. 

"  I  wish,"  he  began  again,  *'  that  my  poor  old 
father  had  brought  me  up  to  business  ways. 
I  might  have  kept  out  of  it   all.     College  is  a 


The   Story  of  a  Wio    York'   House.        (jj 


good  thiiiij;  for  a  man,  of  course  ;  Inil  collci^v 
doesn't  leach  xoii  how  to  hu)'  lots  in  western 
cities  —  esj^eci^ill}'  when  the  western  cities 
aren't    buih." 

"  ColIeL;e  teaches  yon  a  i;"oo(l  inan\'  otlier 
things,  ihouL^li,"  said  \'an  Riper.  frowninL; 
shrill  1)',  as  he  put  the  tijis  of  liis  Ioul;"  hn- 
gers  toL^ether;  "1  wish  I'd  had  Nonr  chance. 
Dolph.  My  bo\'  shall  i;o  to  C'ohnnhia,  that's 
certain." 

"  Your  boy?"  queried  Holph,  raisini^  his 
eyebrows. 

Van   Riper  smiled, 

*' Yes,"  he  s.iid.  "  ni)-  bo)-.  \ o\\  didn't 
know  I  had  a  boy,  did  yt)u  ?  lie's  nearl)'  a 
year  old." 

This  made  Mr.  Jacob  Dolph  kick  at  the  rut; 
once  more,  and  scowl  a  little. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  been  ver}-  neii^hborl)-. 
Van  Riper — "he  be^an  ;  but  the  other  inter- 
rupted him,  smiling  good-naturedly. 

"You  and  I  go  different  wa)s,  Dolph."  he 
said.  "  We're  plain  folks  o\er  in  (ireenwich 
Village,  and  }n)u      you're  a  man  of  f.ishion." 

Jacob    Dolph    smiled      not    very   mirthfull)'. 


94         The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

Van  Riper's  gaze  travelled  around  the  room, 
quietly  curious. 

"-  It  costs  money  to  be  a  man  of  fashion, 
doesn't  it  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Dolph,  "•  it  does." 

There  was  silence  for  a  minute,  which  Van 
Riper  broke. 

*'  If  you've  got  to  sell,  Dolph,  why,  it's  a 
pity;  but  I'll  take  it.  I'll  see  Ogden  to-day,  and 
we  can  finish  the  business  whenever  you  wish. 
But  in  my  opinion,  you'd  do  better  to  borrow." 

Dolph  shook  his  head. 

*'  I've  been  quite  enough  of  a  fool,"  he  re- 
plied. 

"  Well,"  said  Mr.  Van  Riper,  rising,  "  I  must 
get  to  the  office.  You'll  hear  from  Ogden  to- 
morrow. I'm  sorry  you've  got  in  such  a 
snarl ;  but — "  his  lips  stretched  into  something 
like  a  smile — "  I  suppose  you'll  know  better 
next  time.     Good-day." 


After  Mr.  Dolph  had  bowed  his  guest  to 
the  door,  Mrs.  Dolph  slipped  down  the  stairs 
and  into  the  drawing-room. 


The  Story  of  a  Neiv    York  House.       95 

*'  Did  he  take  it  ?  "  she  asked. 

*'  Of  course  he  took  it,"  Dolph  answered, 
bitterly,  "  at  that  price." 

''  Did  he  say  anything,"  she  inquired  again, 
''about  its  being  hard  for  us  to — to  sell  it?" 

"  He  said  we  had  better  not  sell  it  now— 
that  it  would  bring  more  a  few  years  hence." 

''  He  doesn't  understand,"  said  Mrs.  Dolph. 

''  He  couldnt  understand,"  said  Mr.  Dolph. 

Then  she  went  over  to  him  and  kissed 
him. 

*'  It's  only  selling  the  garden,  after  all,"  she 
said  ;  "  it  isn't  like  selling  our  home." 

He  put  his  arm  about  her  waist,  and  they 
walked  into  the  breakfast-room,  and  looked  out 
on  the  garden  which  to-morrow  would  be 
theirs  no  longer,  and  in  a  few  months  would 
not  be  a  garden  at  all. 

High  walls  hemmed  it  in — the  walls  of  the 
houses  which  had  grown  up  around  them.  A 
few  stalks  stood  up  out  of  the  snow,  the  stalks 
of  old-fashioned  flowers — hollyhock  and  lark- 
spur and  Job's-tears  and  the  like — and  the 
lines  of  the  beds  were  defined  by  the  tiny 
hedges  of  box,  with   the   white   snow-powder 


96        Tlic  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

sifted  into  their  dark,  shiny  green.  The  bare 
rose-bushes  were  there,  with  their  spikes  of 
thorns,  and  Httle  mounds  of  snow  showed 
where  the  glories  of  the  poppy-bed  had 
bloomed. 

Jacob  Dolph,  looking  out,  saw  the  clear 
summer  sunlight  lying  where  the  snow  lay 
now.  He  saw  his  mother  moving  about  the 
paths,  cutting  a  flower  here  and  a  bud  there. 
He  saw  himself,  a  little  boy  in  brave  breeches, 
following  her  about,  and  looking  for  the  harm- 
less toads,  and  working  each  one  into  one  of 
the  wonderful  legends  which  he  had  heard 
from  the  old  German  gardener  across  the  way. 
He  saw  his  father,  too,  pacing  those  paths  of 
summer  evenings,  when  the  hollyhocks  nodded 
their  pink  heads,  and  glancing  up,  from  time 
to  time,  at  his  mother  as  she  sat  knitting  at 
that  very  window.  And,  last  of  all  in  the  line, 
yet  first  in  his  mind,  he  saw  his  wife  tripping 
out  in  the  fresh  morning,  to  smile  on  the  flow- 
ers she  loved,  to  linger  lovingly  over  the  beds 
of  verbena,  and  to  pick  the  little  nosegay  that 
stood  by  the  side  of  the  tall  coffee-urn  at  every 
summer-morning  breakfast. 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.        97 

And  the  wife,  looking  out  by  his  side,  saw 
that  splendid  boy  of  theirs  running  over  path 
and  bed,  glad  of  the  flowers  and  the  air  and 
the  freedom,  full  of  young  life  and  boyish 
sprightliness,  his  long  hair  floating  behind  him, 
the  light  of  hope  and  youth  in  his  bright  face. 

And  to-morrow  it  would  be  Van  Riper's  ; 
and  very  soon  there  would  be  houses  there,  to 
close  up  the  friendly  window  which  had  seen 
so  much,  which  had  let  so  much  innocent  joy 
and  gladness  into  the  old  breakfast-room ;  and 
there  would  be  an  end  of  flower-bordered 
paths  and  nodding  hollyhocks.  She  put  her 
face  upon  her  husband's  shoulder,  and  cried  a 
little,  though  he  pretended  not  to  know  it. 
When  she  lifted  it,  somehow  she  had  got  her 
eyes  dry,  though  they  were  painfully  bright 
and  large. 

"  It  isn't  like  selling  our  house,"  she  said 
7 


IV. 

JACOB  DOLPH  got  out  of  the  Broadway 
stage  at  Bowling  Green,  followed  by  Eus- 
tace Dolph.  Eustace  Dolph  at  twenty- 
two  was  no  more  like  his  father  than  his  patri- 
cian name  was  like  simple  and  scriptural  Jacob. 
The  elder  Dolph  was  a  personable  man,  cer- 
tainly ;  a  handsome  man,  even,  who  looked  to 
be  nearer  forty  than  fifty-two;  and  he  was  well 
dressed — perhaps  a  trifle  out  of  the  mode — and 
carried  himself  with  a  certain  genial  dignity, 
and  with  the  lightness  of  a  man  who  has  not 
forgotten  that  he  has  been  a  buck  in  his  time. 
But  Eustace  was  distinctly  and  unmistakably 
a  dandy.  There  are  superficial  differences,  of 
course,  between  the  dandy  of  1852  and  the 
dandy  of  1887;  but  the  structural  foundation 
of  all  types  of  dandy  is  the  same  through  all 
ages.  Back  of  the  clothes — back  of  the  ruffles, 
or  the  bright  neckcloth,  or  the  high  pickardil 
— which  may  vary  with  the  time  or  the  indi- 
vidual, you  will  ever  find  clearly  displayed  to 


The  Story  of  a  Neiv  York  House.        99 

your  eyes  the  obvious  and  unmistakable  spir- 
itual reason  for  and  cause  of  the  dandy — and  it 
is  always  self-assertion  pushed  beyond  the 
bounds  of  self-respect. 

Nov/,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  young  Eustace's 
garments  were  not  really  worse  than  many  a 
man  has  worn  from  simple,  honest  bad  taste. 
To  be  sure,  the  checked  pattern  of  his  trousers 
was  for  size  like  the  design  of  a  prison  grating; 
he  had  a  coat  so  blue  that  it  shimmered  in  the 
sunlight  ;  his  necktie  was  of  purple  satin,  and 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  made  and  fringed, 
and  decked  with  gems  fastened  by  little  gold 
chains  to  other  inferior  guardian  gems ;  and 
his  waistcoat  was  confected  of  satin  and  vel- 
vet and  damask  all  at  once  ;  yet  you  might 
have  put  all  these  things  on  his  father,  and, 
although  the  effect  would  not  have  been  pleas- 
ant, you  would  never  have  called  the  elder  gen- 
tleman a  dandy.  In  other  words,  it  was  Why 
young  Eustace  wore  his  raiment  that  made  it 
dandified,  and  not  the  inherent  gorgeousness 
of  the  raiment  itself. 

The  exchange  of  attire  might  readily  have 
been  made,  so  far  as  the  size  of  the  two  men 


lOO      The  Story  of  a  Nezv    York  House. 

was  concerned.  But  only  in  size  were  they 
alike.  There  was  nothing  of  the  Dolph  in 
Eustace's  face.  He  bore,  indeed,  a  strong  re- 
semblance to  his  maternal  great-grandmother, 
now  many  years  put  away  where  she  could  no 
longer  trouble  the  wicked,  and  where  she  had 
to  let  the  weary  be  at  rest.  (And  how  poor 
little  Aline  had  wept  and  wailed  over  that 
death,  and  lamented  that  she  had  not  been 
more  dutiful  as  a  child  !)  But  his  face  was  not 
strong,  as  the  face  of  Madam  Des  Anges  had 
been.  Some  strain  of  a  weaker  ancestry  re- 
appeared in  it,  and,  so  to  speak,  changed  the 
key  of  the  expression.  What  had  been  pride  in 
the  old  lady  bordered  on  superciliousness  in  the 
young  man.  What  had  been  sternness  became 
a  mere  haughtiness.  Yet  it  was  a  handsome 
face,  and  pleasant,  too,  when  the  young  smile 
came  across  it,  and  you  saw  the  white  small  teeth 
and  the  bright,  intelligent  light  in  the  dark  eyes. 
The  two  men  strolled  through  the  Battery, 
and  then  up  South  Street,  and  so  around 
through  Old  Slip.  They  were  on  business ; 
but  this  was  also  a  pleasure  trip  to  the  elder. 
He  walked  doubly  in  spirit  through  those  old 


The   Story  of  a  New    York  House.      lOi 

streets — a  boy  by  his  father's  side,  a  father 
with  his  son  at  his  elbow.  He  had  not  been 
often  in  the  region  of  late  years.  You  remem- 
ber, he  was  a  man  of  pleasure.  He  was  one 
of  the  first-fruits  of  metropolitan  growth  and 
social  culture.  His  father  had  made  an  idler 
and  dilettante  of  him.  It  was  only  half  a  life 
at  best,  he  thought,  happy  as  he  had  been ; 
blessed  as  he  was  in  wife  and  child.  He  was 
going  to  make  a  business  man  of  his  own  boy. 
After  all,  it  was  through  the  workers  that  great 
cities  grew.  Perhaps  we  were  not  ripe  yet  for 
that  European  institution,  the  idler.  He  him- 
self had  certain  accomplishments  that  other 
Americans  had  not.  He  could  fldner,  for 
instance.  But  to  have  to  fldner  through  fifty 
or  sixty  or  seventy  years  palled  on  the  spirit, 
he  found.  And  one  thing  was  certain,  if  any 
Dolph  was  ever  to  be  an  accomplished  flaneur, 
and  to  devote  his  whole  life  to  that  occupation, 
the  Dolph  fortune  must  be  vastly  increased. 
Old  Jacob  Dolph  had  miscalculated.  The  sum 
he  had  left  in  1829  might  have  done  very  well 
for  the  time,  but  it  was  no  fortune  to  idle  on 
among  the  fashionables  of  1852. 


I02       The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House. 

Something  of  this  Mr.  Dolph  told  his  son; 
but  the  young  man,  although  he  listened  with 
respectful  attention,  appeared  not  to  take  a 
deep  interest  in  his  father's  reminiscences. 
Jacob  Dolph  fancied  even  that  Eustace  did 
not  care  to  be  reminded  of  the  city's  day  of 
small  things.  Perhaps  he  had  something  of 
the  feeling  of  the  successful  struggler  who 
tries  to  forget  the  shabbiness  of  the  past.  If 
this  were  the  case,  his  pride  must  have  been 
chafed,  for  his  father  was  eloquent  in  display- 
ing the  powers  of  an  uncommonly  fine  mem- 
ory ;  and  he  had  to  hear  all  about  the  slips, 
and  the  Fly  Market,  and  the  gradual  extension 
of  the  water-front,  and  the  piles  on  which  the 
old  Tontine  was  built,  and  the  cucumber-wood 
pipes  of  the  old  water-company,  still  lying 
under  their  feet.  Once,  at  least,  he  showed  a 
genuine  enjoyment  of  his  father's  discourse, 
and  that  was  when  it  ran  on  the  great  retinue 
of  servants  in  which  Jacob  Dolph  the  elder 
had  indulged  himself,  I  think  he  was  actually 
pleased  when  he  heard  that  his  grandfather 
had  at  one  time  kept  slaves. 

Wandering  in   this  way,  to  the  running  ac- 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.      103 

companiment  of  Mr.  Dolph's  lecture,  they 
came  to  Water  Street,  and  here,  as  though  he 
were  reminded  of  the  object  of  their  trip,  the 
father  summed  up  his  reminiscences  in  shape 
for  a  neat  moral. 

''The  city  grows,  you  see,  my  boy,  and 
we've  got  to  grow  with  it.  I've  stood  still ; 
but  you  sha'n't." 

"Well,  governor,"  said  the  younger  man, 
''  I'll  be  frank  with  you.  I  don't  like  the  pros- 
pect." 

"You  will — you  will,  my  boy.  You'll  live 
to  thank  me." 

"Very  likely  you're  right,  sir;  I  don't  deny 
it;  but,  as  I  say,  I  don't  like  the  prospect.  I 
don't  see — with  all  due  respect,  sir — how  any 
gentleman  can  like  trade.  It  may  be  neces- 
sary, and  of  course  I  don't  think  it's  lowering, 
or  any  of  that  nonsense,  you  know^ ;  but  it 
can't  be  pleasant.  Of  course,  if  your  governor 
had  to  do  it,  it  was  all  right ;  but  I  don't  be- 
lieve he  liked  it  any  better  than  I  should,  or 
he  wouldn't  have  been  so  anxious  to  keep  you 
out  of  it." 

"  My    poor    father    made    a    great    mistake, 


I04       TJic  Story  of  a  New  York  Hoiisc. 

Eustace.  He  would  admit  it  now,  I'm  sure,  if 
he  were  alive." 

"Well,  sir,  I'm  going  to  try  it,  of  course. 
I'll  give  it  a  fair  trial.  But  when  the  two 
years  are  up,  sir,  as  we  agreed,  I  hope  you 
won't  say  anything  against  my  going  into  the 
law,  or — well,  yes — "  he  colored  a  little — "  try- 
ing what  I  can  do  on  the  Street.  I  know  what 
you  think  about  it,  sir,"  he  went  on,  hastily  ; 
"but  there  are  two  sides  to  the  question,  and 
it's  my  opinion  that,  for  an  intelligent  man, 
there's  more  money  to  be  made  up  there  in 
Wall  Street  in  one  year  than  can  be  got  out 
of  haggling  over  merchandise  for  a  lifetime." 

Jacob  Dolph  grew  red  in  the  face  and  shook 
his  head  vigorously. 

"Don't  speak  of  it,  sir,  don't  speak  of  it!" 
he  said,  vehemently.  "  It's  the  curse  of  the 
country.  If  you  have  any  such  infernal  opin- 
ions, don't  vent  them  in  my  presence,  sir.  I 
know  what  I  am  talking  about.  Keep  clear  of 
Wall  Street,  sir.  It  is  the  straight  road  to 
perdition." 

They  entered  one  of  a  row  of  broad-fronted 
buildings  of  notable  severity  and  simplicity  of 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      105 

architecture.  Four  square  stone  columns  up- 
held its  brick  front,  and  on  one  of  these  faded 
gilt  letters,  on  a  ground  of  dingy  black,  said 
simply : 

ABRAM    VAN    RIPER'S   SON. 

There  was  no  further  announcement  of 
Abram  Van  Riper's  Son's  character,  or  of  the 
nature  of  his  business.  It  was  assumed  that 
all  people  knew  who  Abram  Van  Riper's  Son 
was,  and  that  his  (Abram  Van  Riper's)  ship- 
chandlery  trade  had  long  before  grown  into 
a  great ''  commission  merchant's  "  business. 

It  was  full  summer,  and  there  were  no  doors 
between  the  pillars  to  bar  entrance  to  the 
gloomy  cavern  behind  them,  which  stretched 
in  semi-darkness  the  whole  length  and  width 
of  the  building,  save  for  a  narrow  strip  at  the 
rear,  where,  behind  a  windowed  partition,  clerks 
were  writing  at  high  desks,  and  where  there 
was  an  inner  and  more  secluded  pen  for  Abram 
Van  Riper's  son. 

In  the  front  of  the  cave,  to  one  side,  was  a 
hoistway,  where  bales  and  boxes  were  drawn 
up  from  the  cellar  or  swung  twisting  and  twirl- 


io6      TJic  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 


ing  to  the  lofts  above.  Amidships  the  place 
was  strewn  with  small  tubs,  matting-covered 
bales  and  boxes,  coils  of  bright  new  rope,  and 
odd-looking  packages  of  a  hundred  sorts,  all  of 
them  with  gaping  wounds  in  their  envelopes, 
or  otherwise  having  their  pristine  integrity 
wounded.     From   this  it   was  not   difficult   to 

guess  that  these 
were  samples  of 
merchandise. 
Most  of  them 
gave  forth  odors 
upon  the  air, 
odors  ranging 
from  the  purely 
aromatic,  sugges- 
tive of  Oriental 
fancies  or  tropic 
dreams  of  spice,  to  the  positively  offensive — 
the  latter  varieties  predominating. 

But  certain  objects  upon  a  long  table  were 
so  peculiar  in  appearance  that  the  visitors 
could  not  pass  them  by  with  a  mere  glance  of 
wonder.  They  looked  like  small  leather  pies, 
badly   warped  in   the  baking.     A  clerk   in  his 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.      107 

shirt  sleeves,  with  his  straw  hat  on  one  side  of 
his  head,  whistled  as  he  cut  into  these,  reveal- 
ing a  livid  interior,  the  color  of  half-cooked 
veal,  which  he  inspected  with  care.  Eustace 
was  moved  to  positive  curiosity. 

"What  are  they?"  he  inquired  of  the  clerk, 
pride  mingling  with  disgust  in  his  tone,  as  he 
caught  a  smell  like  unto  the  smell  which  might 
arise  from  raw  smoked  salmon  that  had  lain 
three  days  in  the  sun. 

*'  Central  American,"  responded  the  clerk, 
with  brevity,  and  resumed  his  whistling  of 

"  My  name  is  Jake  Keyser,  I  was  born  in  Spring  Garden  ; 
To  make  me  a  preacher  my  father  did  try." 

"  Central  American  what  ?  "  pursued  the  in- 
quirer. 

**  Rubber !  "  said  the  clerk,  with  a  scorn  so 
deep  and  far  beyond  expression  that  the  com- 
bined pride  of  the  Dolphs  and  the  Des  Anges 
wilted  into  silence  for  the  moment.  As  they 
went  on  toward  the  rear  ofifice,  while  the  clerk 
gayly  whistled  the  notes  of 

"  It's  no  use  a-blowing,  for  I  am  a  hard  'un — 

I'm  bound  to  be  a  butcher,  by  heavens,  or  die  ! " 


io8       TJic  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

Eustace  recovered  sufficiently  to  demand  of 
his  father  : 

'*  I  say,  sir,  shall  I  have  to  handle  that 
damned  stuff?" 

"  Hush!  "  said  his  senior;  "here's  Mr.  Van 
Riper." 

Mr.  Van  Riper  came  to  the  office  door  to 
welcome  them,  with  his  thin  face  set  in  the 
form  of  a  smile. 

"Ah  I"  he  said,  "  here's  the  young  man,  is 
he  ?  Fine  big  fellow,  Dolph.  Well,  sir,  so 
you  are  going  to  embrace  a  mercantile  career, 
are  you?  That's  what  they  call  it  in  these 
fine  days,  Dolph." 

"  I  am  going  to  try  to,  sir,"  replied  the 
young  man. 

"  He  will.  Van  Riper,"  put  in  his  father, 
hastily  ;  "  he'll  like  it  as  soon  as  he  gets  used 
to  it — I  know  he  will." 

"  Well,"  returned  Mr.  Van  Riper,  with  an 
attempt  at  facetious  geniality,  "  we'll  try  to 
get  his  nose  down  to  the  grindstone,  we  will. 
Come  into  my  office  with  me,  Dolph,  and  I'll 
hand  this  young  gentleman  over  to  old  Mr. 
Daw.     Mr.   Daw  will    feel  his  teeth— eh,   Mr. 


The  Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House.      109 

Daw  ? — see  what  he  doesiit  know — how's  that, 
Mr,  Daw  ?  You  remember  Mr.  Daw,  Doiph — 
used  to  be  with  your  father  before  he  went  out 
of  business — been  with  us  ever  since.  Let's 
see,  how  long  is  that,  Daw  ?  Most  fifty  years, 
ain't  it  ?  " 

Mr.  Daw,  who  looked  as  though  he  might 
have  been  one  hundred  years  at  the  business, 
wheeled  around  and  descended  with  stiff  de- 
liberation from  his  high  stool,  holding  his  pen 
in  his  mouth  as  he  solemnly  shook  hands  with 
Jacob  Dolph,  and  peered  into  his  face.  Then 
he  took  the  pen  out  of  his  mouth. 

*'  Looks  like  his  father,"  was  Mr.  Daw's  com- 
ment. "  Forty-five  years  the  twenty-ninth  of 
this  month,  sin  You  was  a  little  shaver  then. 
I  remember  you  comin'  into  the  store  and 
whittlin'  timber  with  your  little  jack-knife.  I 
was  only  eleven  years  with  your  father,  sir — 
eleven  years  and  six  months — went  to  him 
when  I  was  fourteen  years  old.  That's  fifty- 
six  years  and  six  months  in  the  service  of  two 
of  the  best  houses  that  ever  was  in  New  York 
— an'  I  can  do  my  work  with  any  two  young 
shavers  in  the  town — ain't  missed  a  day  in  nine- 


1 1  o       The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 

teen  years  now.  Your  father  hadn't  never 
ought  to  have  gone  out  of  business,  Mr.  Dolph. 
He  did  a  great  business  for  those  days,  and  he 
had  the  makin'  of  a  big  house.  Goin'  to  bring 
your  boy  up  Hke  a  good  New  York  merchant, 
hey  ?  Come  along  here  with  me,  young  man, 
and  I'll  see  if  you're  half  the  man  your  grand- 
father was.  He  hadn't  never  ought  to  have 
given  up  business,  Mr.  Dolph.  But  he  was  all 
for  pleasurin',  an'  the  play-houses,  an'  havin' 
fine  times.  Come  along,  young  man.  What's 
your  name  ?  " 

"  Eustace  Dolph." 

*' Hm  !     Jacob's  better." 

And  he  led  the  neophyte  away. 

*'  Curigus  old  case,"  said  Mr.  Van  Riper, 
dryly.  *'  Best  accountant  in  New  York.  See 
that  high  stool  of  his  ? — can't  get  him  off  it. 
Five  years  ago  I  gave  him  a  low  desk  and  an 
arm-chair.  In  one  week  he  was  back  again, 
roosting  up  there.  Said  he  didn't  feel  com- 
fortable with  his  feet  on  the  ground.  He 
thought  that  sort  of  thing  might  do  for 
aged  people,  but  he  wasn't  m^de  of  cotton- 
batting." 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      1 1 1 

Thus  began  Eustace  Dolph's  apprenticeship 
to  business,  and  mightily  ill  he  liked  it. 


There  came  a  day,  a  winter  day  in  1854, 
when  there  was  great  agitation  among  what 
were  then  called  the  real  old  families  of  New 
York.  I  cannot  use  the  term  "  fashionable 
society,"  because  that  is  more  comprehensive, 
and  would  include  many  wealthy  and  ambi- 
tious families  from  New  England,  who  were 
decidedly  not  of  the  Dolphs'  set.  And  then, 
the  Dolphs  could  hardly  be  reckoned  among 
the  leaders  of  fashion.  To  live  on  or  near  the 
boundaries  of  fashion's  domain  is  to  lower  your 
social  status  below  the  absolute  pitch  of  per- 
fection, and  fashion  in  1854  drew  the  line  pretty 
sharply  at  Bleecker  Street.  Above  Bleecker 
Street  the  cream  of  the  cream  rose  to  the  sur- 
face ;  below,  you  were  ranked  as  skim  milk. 
The  social  world  was  spreading  up  into  the 
wastes  sacred  to  the  circus  and  the  market- 
garden,  although,  if  Admiral  Farragut  had 
stood  on  his  sea-legs  where  he  stands  now,  he 
might  have  had  a  fairly  clear  view  of  Chelsea 


1 1 2       Tlic  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House, 

Village,  and  seen  Alonzo  Cushman  II.,  or 
Alonzo  Cushman  III.,  perhaps,  going  around 
and  collecting  his  rents. 

But  the  old  families  still  fought  the  tide  of 
trade,  many  of  them  neck-deep  and  very  un- 
comfortable. They  would  not  go  from  St. 
John's  Park,  nor  from  North  Moore  and  Grand 
Streets.  They  had  not  the  bourgeois  conser- 
vatism of  the  Greenwich  Villagers,  which  has 
held  them  in  a  solid  phalanx  almost  to  this 
very  day  ;  but  still,  in  a  v/ay,  they  resented  the 
up-town  movement,  and  resisted  it.  So  that 
when  they  did  have  to  buy  lots  in  the  high- 
numbered  streets  they  had  to  pay  a  fine  price 
for  them. 

It  was  this  social  party  that  was  stirred  by  a 
bit  of  scandal  about  the  Dolphs.  I  do  not 
know  why  I  should  call  it  scandal;  yet  I  am 
sure  society  so  held  it.  For  did  not  society 
whisper  it,  and  nod  and  wink  over  it,  and  tell 
it  in  dark  corners,  and  chuckle,  and  lift  its 
multitudinous  hands  and  its  myriad  eyebrows, 
and  say  in  innumerable  keys:  "Well,  upon  my 

word  !  "   and  ''  Well,  I  sJiould  think !  '*  and 

''Who    would    ever    have    thought    of    such   a 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      1 1 3 

thing?"  and  the  like?  Did  not  society  make 
very  funny  jokes  about  it,  and  did  not  society's 
professional  gossips  get  many  an  invitation  to 
dinner  because  they  professed  to  have  authen- 
tic details  of  the  way  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dolph 
looked  when  they  spoke  about  it,  and  just  what 
they  had  to  say  for  themselves  ? 

And  yet  it  was  nothing  more  than  this,  that 
Mr.  Dolph  being  fifty-four,  and  his  wife  but  a 
few  years  younger,  were  about  to  give  to  the 
world  another  Dolph.  It  was  odd,  I  admit ;  it 
was  unusual ;  if  I  must  go  so  far,  it  was,  I  sup- 
pose, unconventional.  But  I  don't  see  that  it 
was  necessary  for  Mr.  Philip  Waters  to  make 
an  epigram  about  it.  It  was  a  very  clever  epi- 
gram ;  but  if  you  had  seen  dear  old  Mrs. 
Dolph,  with  her  rosy  cheeks  and  the  gray  in 
her  hair,  knitting  baby-clothes  with  hands 
which  were  still  white  and  plump  and  comely, 
while  great  dark  eyes  looked  timorously  into 
the  doubtful,  fear-clouded  future,  I  think  you 
would  have  been  ashamed  that  you  had  even 
listened  to  that  epigram. 

The  expected  event  was  of  special  and  per- 
sonal  interest  to  only  three  people — for,  after 


114       TJie  Story  of  a  Nezu  York  House. 

all,  when  you  think  of  it,  it  was  not  exactly 
society's  business — and  it  affected  them  in 
widely  different  ways. 

Jacob  Dolph  was  all  tenderness  to  his  wife, 
and  all  sympathy  with  her  fears,  with  her  ner- 
vous apprehensions,  even  with  her  morbid 
forebodings  of  impossible  ills.  He  did  not 
repine  at  the  seclusion  which  the  situation 
forced  upon  them,  although  his  life  for  years 
had  been  given  up  to  society's  demands,  until 
pleasure-seeking  and  pleasure-giving  had  grown 
into  a  routine,  which  occupied  his  whole  mind. 
His  wife  saw  him  more  than  she  had  for  many 
years.  Clubs  and  card-parties  had  few  temp- 
tations for  him  now  ;  he  sat  at  home  and  read 
to  her  and  talked  to  her,  and  did  his  best  to 
follow  the  injunctions  of  the  doctor,  and  "  cre- 
ate and  preserve  in  her  a  spirit  of  cheerful  and 
hopeful  tranquillity,  free  of  unnecessary  appre- 
hension." 

But  when  he  did  go  to  the  club,  when  he  was 
in  male  society,  his  breast  expanded,  and  if  he 
had  to  answer  a  polite  inquiry  as  to  Mrs. 
Dolph's  general  health,  I  am  afraid  that  he  re- 
sponded :    "  Mrs.  Dolph  is  extremely  well,  sir, 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      1 1 5 

extremely  well ! "  with  a  pride  which  the  mor- 
alists will  tell  you  is  baseless,  unworthy,  and 
unreasonable. 

As  for  Aline  herself,  no  one  may  know  what 
timorous  hopes  stirred  in  her  bosom  and 
charmed  the  years  away,  and  brought  back 
to  her  a  lovely  youth  that  was  almost  girlish 
in  its  innocent,  half-frightened  gladness.  Out- 
side, this  great,  wise,  eminently  proper  world 
that  she  lived  in  girded  at  the  the  old  woman 
who  was  to  bear  a  child,  and  laughed  behind 
tasselled  fans,  and  made  wondrous  merry  over 
Nature's  work ;  but  within  the  old  house  she 
sat,  and  sewed  upon  the  baby-clothes,  or,  wan- 
dering from  cupboard  to  cupboard,  found  the 
yellowing  garments,  laid  away  more  than  a 
score  of  years  before — the  poor  little  lace- 
decked  trifles  that  her  first  boy  had  worn  ;  and 
she  thanked  heaven,  in  her  humble  way,  that 
twenty-four  years  had  not  taken  the  love  and 
joy  of  a  wife  and  a  mother  out  of  her  heart. 

She  could  not  find  all  her  boy's  dresses  and 
toys,  for  she  was  open-handed,  and  had  given 
many  of  them  away  to  people  who  needed 
them.     This  brought  about  an  odd  encounter. 


I  1 6       The  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 

The  third  person  who  had  a  special  interest  in 
the  prospect  of  the  birth  of  a  Dolph  was  young 
Eustace,  and  he  found  nothing  in  it  wherewith 
to  be  pleased.  For  Eustace  Dolph  was  of  the 
ultra-fashionables.  He  cared  less  for  old  fam- 
ily than  for  new  ideas,  and  he  did  not  let  him- 
self fall  behind  in  the  march  of  social  progress, 
even  though  he  was,  as  he  admitted  with  hu- 
mility born  of  pride,  only  a  poor  devil  of  a 
down-town  clerk.  If  his  days  were  occupied, 
he  had  his  nights  to  himself,  and  he  lengthened 
them  to  suit  himself.  At  first  this  caused  his 
mother  to  fret  a  little ;  but  poor  Aline  had 
come  into  her  present  world  from  the  conven- 
tional seclusion  of  King's  Bridge,  and  her  only 
authority  on  questions  of  masculine  license  was 
her  husband.  He,  being  appealed  to,  had  to 
admit  that  his  own  hours  in  youth  had  been 
late,  and  that  he  supposed  the  hours  of  a 
newer  generation  should  properly  be  later  still. 
Mr.  Dolph  forgot,  perhaps,  that  while  his  early 
potations  had  been  vinous,  those  of  the  later  age 
were  distinctly  spirituous ;  and  that  the  early 
morning  cocktail  and  the  midnight  brandy-and- 
soda  were  abominations  unknown  to  his  own 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      1 1 7 

well-bred  youth.  With  port  and  sherry  and 
good  Bordeaux  he  had  been  famiHar  all  his 
life ;  a  dash  of  liqueur  after  dinner  did  not 
trouble  his  digestion ;  he  found  a  bottle  of 
champagne  a  pleasant  appetizer  and  a  gentle 
stimulant ;  but  whiskey  and  gin  were  to  him 
the  drinks  of  the  vulgar  ;  and  rum  and  brandy 
stood  on  his  sideboard  only  to  please  fiercer 
tastes  than  his  own.  Perhaps,  also,  he  was  ig- 
norant of  the  temptations  that  assail  a  young 
man  in  a  great  city,  he  who  had  grown  up  in 
such  a  little  one  that  he  had  at  one  time 
known  every  one  who  was  worth  knowing  in  it. 
However  this  may  have  been,  Eustace 
Dolph  ruled  for  himself  his  going  out  and  his 
coming  in.  He  went  further,  and  chose  his 
own  associates,  not  always  from  among  the 
scions  of  the  "old  families."  He  found  those 
excellent  young  men  "  slow,"  and  he  selected 
for  his  own  private  circle  a  set  which  was 
mixed  as  to  origin  and  unanimously  frivolous 
as  to  tendency.  The  foreign  element  was 
strongly  represented.  Bright  young  Irishmen 
of  excellent  families,  and  mysterious  French 
and    Italian  counts   and    marquises,    borrowed 


1 8       The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 


many  of  the  good  gold  dollars  of  the  Dolphs, 
and  forgot  to  return  an  equivalent  in  the 
local  currency  of  the  O'Reagans  of  Castle 
Reagan,  or  the  D'Arcy  de  Montmorenci,  or 
the  Montescudi  di  Bajocchi. 
Among  this  set  there  was 
much  merry-making  when  the 
news  from  the  Dolph  house- 
hold sifted  down  to  them 
from  the  gossip-sieve  of  the 
best  society.  They  could  not 
very  well  chaff  young  Dolph 
openly,  for  he  was  muscular  and  high-tem- 
pered, and,  under  the  most  agreeable  condi- 
tions, needed  a  fight  of  some  sort  every  six 
months  or  so,  and  liked  a  bit  of  trouble  in  be- 
tween fights.  But  a  good  deal  of  low  and 
malicious  humor  came  his  wa)',  from  one 
source  or  another,  and  he,  with  the  hot  and 
concentrated  egotism  of  youth,  thought  that 
he  was  in  a  ridiculous  and  trying  position,  and 
chafed  over  it. 

There  had  been  innuendos  and  hints  and 
glancing  allusions,  but  no  one  had  dared  to 
make  any  direct  assault  of  wit,  until  one  even- 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      1 1 9 

ing  young  Haskins  came  into  the  club  *'  a  little 
flushed  with  wine."  (The  "  wine  "  was  brandy.) 
It  seems  that  young  Haskins  had  found  at 
home  an  ivory  rattle  which  had  belonged  to 
Eustace  twenty  years  before,  and  which  Mrs. 
Dolph  had  given  to  Mrs.  Haskins  when  Eus- 
tace enlarged  his  horizon  in  the  matter  of 
toys. 

Haskins,  being,  as  I  have  said,  somewhat 
flushed  with  brandy,  came  up  to  young  Dolph, 
who  was  smoking  in  the  window,  and  medi- 
tating with  frowning  brows,  and  said  to  him  : 

*'  Here,  Dolph,  I've  done  with  this.  You'd 
better  take  it  back — it  may  be  wanted  down 
your  way." 

There  was  a  scene.  Fortunately,  two  men 
were  standing  just  behind  Dolph,  who  were 
able  to  throw  their  arms  about  him,  and  hold 
him  back  for  a  few  seconds.  There  would 
have  been  further  consequences,  however,  if  it 
had  not  been  that  Eustace  was  in  the  act  of 
throwing  the  rattle  back  at  Haskins  when  the 
two  men  caught  him.  Thus  the  toy  went 
wide  of  its  mark,  and  fell  in  the  lap  of  Philip 
Waters,  who,  old  as  he  was,  generally  chose  to 


1 20       The  Story  of  a  Nciu  York  House. 

be  in  the  company  of  the  young  men  at  the 
club;  and  then  PhiHp  Waters  did  something 
that  almost  atones,  I  think,  for  the  epigram. 

He  looked  at  the  date  on  the  rattle,  and  then 
he  rose  up  and  went  between  the  two  young 
men,  and  spoke  to  Haskins. 

''Young  man,"  he  said,  "when  Mrs.  Jacob 
Dolph  gave  your  mother  this  thing,  your  father 
had  just  failed  for  the  second  time  in  three 
years.  He  had  come  to  New  York  about  five 
years  before  from  Hartford,  or  Providence,  or 
— Succotash,  or  whatever  his  confounded  town 
was.  Mr.  Jacob  Dolph  got  Mr.  Van  Riper  to 
give  your  father  an  extension  on  his  note,  or 
he  would  have  gone  to  the  debtors'  prison 
down  by  the  City  Hall.  As  it  was,  he  had  to 
sell  his  house,  and  the  coat  off  his  back,  for  all 
I  know.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  the  Dolphs,  devil 
the  rattle  you'd  have  had,  and  you  wouldn't 
have  been  living  in  Bond  Street  to-day." 

After  which  Mr.  Philip  Waters  sat  down  and 
read  the  evening  paper  ;  and  when  young  Has- 
kins was  able  to  speak  he  asked  young  Dolph's 
pardon,  and  got  it — at  least,  a  formal  assurance 
that  he  had  it. 


'''i'B}Pi '" '  I 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House,      121 

The  baby  was  born  in  the  spring,  and  every- 
body said  she  was  the  image  of  her  mother. 


There  will  come  a  day,  it  may  be,  when  ad- 
vancing civilization  will  civilize  sleighing  out 
of  existence,  as  far  as  New  York  is  concerned.- 
Year  after  year  the  days  grow  fewer  that  will 
let  a  cutter  slip  up  beyond  the  farthest  of  the 
''  road-houses  "  and  cross  the  line  into  West- 
chester. People  say  that  the  climate  is  chang- 
ing ;  but  close  observers  recognize  a  sympathy 
between  the  decrease  of  snow-storms  and  the 
increase  of  refinement — that  is,  a  sympathy  in 
inverse  ratio  ;  a  balanced  progress  in  opposite 
directions.  As  we  grow  further  and  further 
beyond  even  old-world  standards  of  polite 
convention,  as  we  formalize  and  super-for- 
malize our  codes,  and  steadily  eliminate  every 
element  of  amusement  from  our  amusements, 
Nature  in  strict  conformity  represses  her  joy- 
ous exuberance.  The  snow-storm  of  the  past 
is  gone,  because  the  great  public  sleigh  that 
held  twenty-odd  merry-makers  in  a  shell  like  a 
circus   band-wagon   has    gone    out   of    fashion 


122       The  Story  of  a  Nczu  York  House. 

among  all  classes.  Now  we  have,  during  severe 
winters,  just  enough  snow  from  time  to  time  to 
bear  the  light  sleigh  of  the  young  man  who, 
being  in  good  society,  is  also  horsy.  When 
he  finds  the  road  vulgar,  the  poor  plebeian 
souls  who  go  sleighing  for  the  sport  of  it  may 
sell  their  red  and  blue  vehicles,  for  Nature,  the 
sycophant   of  fashion,  will  snow  no  more. 

But  they  had  ''  good  old-fashioned  "  snow- 
storms eighty  years  after  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  and  one  had  fallen  upon  New 
York  that  tempted  Mrs.  Jacob  Dolph  to  leave 
her  baby,  ten  months  old,  in  the  nurse's 
charge,  and  go  out  with  her  husband  in  the 
great  family  sleigh  for  what  might  be  the  last 
ride  of  the  season.  " 

They  had  been  far  up  the  road — to  Arcu- 
larius's,  maybe,  there  swinging  around  and 
whirling  back.  They  had  flown  down  the  long 
country  road,  and  back  into  the  city,  to  meet 
— it  was  early  in  the  day — the  great  proces- 
sion of  sleighing  folk  streaming  northward  up 
Broadway.  It  was  one  of  New  York's  great, 
irregular,  chance-set  carnivals,  and  every  sleigh 
was  out,  from  the  *' exquisite's"  gilded  chariot, 


The   Story  of  a  Nezv  York  House.      123 

a  shell  hardly  larger  than  a  fair-sized  easy- 
chair,  to  the  square,  low-hung  red  sledge  of 
the  butcher-boy,  who  braved  it  with  the  fash- 
ionables, his  Sc/meider-mdidQ  clothes  on  his 
burly  form,  and  his  girl  by  his  side,  in  her  best 
Bowery  bonnet.  Everybody  was  a-sleighing. 
The  jingle  of  countless  bells  fell  on  the  crisp 
air  in  a  sort  of  broken  rhythm — a  rude  tempo 
rubato.  It  was  fashionable  then.  But  we — we 
amuse  ourselves  less  boisterously. 

They  drew  up  at  the  door  of  the  Dolph 
house,  and  Jacob  Dolph  lifted  his  wife  out  of 
the  sleigh,  and  carried  her  up  the  steps  into 
the  breakfast-room,  and  set  her  down  in  her 
easy -chair.  He  was  bending  over  her  to  ask 
her  if  her  ride  had  done  her  good,  when  a  ser- 
vant entered  and  handed  him  a  letter  marked 
*'  Immediate." 

He  read  it,  and  all  the  color  of  the  winter's 
day  faded  out  of  his  face. 

"  I've  got  to  go  down  to  Van  Riper's,"  he 
said,  "at  once  ;  he  wants  me." 

*'  Has  anything  happened  to — to  Eustace?" 
his  wife  cried  out. 

*^  He  doesn't  say  so — I  suppose — I  suppose 


124       TJic  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

it's  only  business  of  some  sort,"  her  husband 
said.  His  face  was  white.  "  Don't  detain  me, 
dear.  I'll  come  back  as  soon  as — as  soon  as  I 
get  through." 

He  kissed  her,  and  was  gone.  Half  an  hour 
later  he  sat  in  the  ofifice  of  Abram  Van  Riper's 
Son. 

There  was  no  doubting  it,  no  denying  it,  no 
palliating  it  even.  The  curse  had  come  upon 
the  house  of  Jacob  Dolph,  and  his  son  was  a 
thief  and  a  fugitive. 

It  was  an  old  story  and  a  simple  story.  It 
was  the  story  of  the  Haskins's  million  and  the 
Dolphs'  hundred  thousand  ;  it  was  the  story  of 
the  boy  with  a  hundred  thousand  in  prospect 
trying  to  spend  money  against  the  boy  with 
a  million  in  sight.  It  was  the  story  of  cards, 
speculation — another  name  for  that  sort  of 
gambling  which  is  worse  than  any  on  the 
green  cloth — and  what  is  euphemistically 
known  as  wine. 

There  was  enough  oral  and  documentary 
evidence  to  make  the  whole  story  hideously 
clear  to  Jacob  Dolph,  as  he  sat  in  that  dark 
little  pen  of  Van  Riper's  and  had  the  history 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.      125 

of  his   son's   fall  spelled  out  to  him,  word  by 
word.     The  boy  had  proved  himself   apt  and 
clever  in  his  office  work.     His  education  had 
given    him    an    advantage    over   all   the   other 
clerks,  and  he  had  learned  his  duties  with  won- 
derful  ease.     And  when,  six   months   before, 
old   Mr.  Daw  had  let   himself  down   from   his 
stool  for  the  last  time,  and  had  muffled  up  his 
thin    old    throat    in    his    great    green   worsted 
scarf,  and  had  gone  home  to  die,  young  Dolph 
had    been    put    temporarily  in  his   place.     In 
those  six  months  he   had  done  his  bad  work. 
Even  Van  Riper  admitted  that  it  must   have 
been    a    sudden    temptation.      But— he    had 
yielded.     In  those  six  months   fifty  thousand 
dollars    of    Abram    Van    Riper's    money    had 
gone  into  the  gulf  that  yawned  in  Wall  Street; 
fifty  thousand  dollars,  not  acquired  by  falsify- 
ing the  books,  but  filched  outright  from  the 
private    safe    to    which    he    had    access;    fifty 
thousand    dollars,  in   securities  which   he   had 
turned  into  money,  acting  as  the  confidential 
man  of  the  house. 

When  Jacob  Dolph,  looking   like  a  man  of 
eighty,    left    the    private    office    of    Mr.    Van 


126       TJic  Story  of  a  New    York  House, 

Riper  he  had  two  things  to  do.  One  was  to 
tell  his  wife,  the  other  was  to  assign  enough 
property  to  Van  Riper  to  cover  the  amount  of 
the  defalcation.  Both  had  been  done  before 
night. 


V. 


IT  is  to  be  said  for  society  that  there  was 
very  little  chuckling  and  smiling  when  this 
fresh  piece  of  news  about  the  Dolphs  came  out. 
Nor  did  the  news  pass  from  house  to  house  like 
wildfire.  It  rather  leaked  out  here  and  there, 
percolating  through  barriers  of  friendly  silence, 
slipping  from  discreet  lips  and  repeated  in 
anxious  confidence,  with  all  manner  of  qualifi- 
cations and  hopeful  suppositions  and  sugges- 
tions. As  a  matter  of  fact,  people  never  really 
knew  just  what  Eustace  Dolph  had  done,  or 
how  far  his  wrong-doing  had  carried  him.  All 
that  was  ever  positively  known  was  that  the 
boy  had  got  into  trouble  down-town,  and  had 
gone  to  Europe.  The  exact  nature  of  the 
trouble  could  only  be  conjectured.  The  very 
brokers  who  had  been  the  instruments  of 
young  Dolph's  ruin  were  not  able  to  separate 
his  authorized  speculations  from  those  which 
were  illegitimate.  They  could  do  no  more  than 
guess,   from   what  they  knew   of  Van    Riper's 


128       The  Story  of  a  Nciu  York  House, 

conservative  method  of  investment,  that  the 
young  man's  unfortunate  purchases  were  made 
for  himself,  and  they  figured  these  at  fifty-five 
thousand  odd  hundred  dollars. 

Somebody,  who  looked  up  the  deed  which 
Jacob  Dolph  executed  that  winter  day,  found 
that  he  had  transferred  to  Van  Riper  real 
estate  of  more  than  that  value. 

No  word  ever  came  from  the  cold  lips  of 
Abram  Van  Riper's  son  ;  and  his  office  was  a 
piece  of  all  but  perfect  machinery,  which  dared 
not  creak  when  he  commanded  silence.  And 
no  one  save  Van  Riper  and  Dolph,  and  their 
two  lawyers,  knew  the  whole  truth.  Dolph 
never  even  spoke  about  it  to  his  wife,  after 
that  first  night.  It  was  these  five  people  only 
who  knew  that  Mr.  Jacob  Dolph  had  parted 
with  the  last  bit  of  real  estate  that  he  owned, 
outside  of  his  own  home,  and  they  knew  that 
his  other  property  was  of  a  doubtful  sort,  that 
could  yield  at  the  best  only  a  very  limited  in- 
come—  hardly  enough  for  a  man  who  lived  in 
so  great  a  house,  and  whose  doors  were  open 
to  all  his  friends  nine  months  in  the  year. 

Yet  he  stayed  there,  and  grew  old  with  an 


The  Story  of  a  Nczv  York  House.      129 

age  which  the  years  have  not  among  their  gifts. 
When  his  Httle  girl  was  large  enough  to  sit 
upon  his  knee,  her  small  hands  clutched  at  a 
snowy-white  mustache,  and  she  complained 
that  his  great,  dark,  hollow  eyes  never  would 
look  "right  into  hers,  away  down  deep."  Yet 
he  loved  her,  and  talked  more  to  her  perhaps 
than  to  any  one  else,  not  even  excepting  Aline. 

But  he  never  spoke  to  her  of  the  elder 
brother  whom  she  could  not  remember.  It 
was  her  mother  who  whispered  something  of 
the  story  to  her,  and  told  her  not  to  let  papa 
know  that  she  knew  of  it,  for  it  would  grieve 
him.  Aline  herself  knew  nothing  about  the 
boy  save  that  he  lived,  and  lived  a  criminal. 
Jacob  himself  could  only  have  told  her  that 
their  son  was  a  wandering  adventurer,  known 
as  a  blackleg  and  sharper  in  every  town  in 
Europe. 

The  doors  of  the  great  house  were  closed  to 
all  the  world,  or  opened  only  for  some  old 
friend,  who  went  away  very  soon  out  of  the 
presence  of  a  sadness  beyond  all  solace  of 
words,  or  kindly  look,  or  hand-clasp.  And  so, 
in  something  that  only  the  grace  of  their  gentle 
9 


1 30      The  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

lives  relieved  from  absolute  poverty,  those 
three  dwelt  in  the  old  house,  and  let  the  world 
slip  by  them. 


There  was  no  sleep  for  any  one  of  the  little 
household  in  the  great  house  on  the  night  of 
the  14th  of  July,  1863.  Doors  and  blinds  were 
closed  ;  only  a  light  shone  through  the  half-open 
slats  at  a  second-story  window,  and  in  that  room 
Aline  lay  sick,  almost  unto  death,  her  white 
hair  loosed  from  its  usual  dainty  neatness,  her 
dark  eyes  turning  with  an  unmeaning  gaze 
from  the  face  of  the  little  girl  at  her  side  to  the 
face  of  her  husband  at  the  foot  of  her  bed. 
Her  hands,  wrinkled  and  small,  groped  over 
the  coverlet,  with  nervous  twitchings,  as  every 
now  and  then  the  howls  or  the  pistol-shots  of 
the  mob  in  the  streets  below  them  fell  on  her 
ear.  And  at  every  such  movement  the  lips  of 
the  girl  by  her  pillow  twitched  in  piteous  sym- 
pathy. About  half-past  twelve  there  was 
sharp  firing  in  volleys  to  the  southward  of 
them,  that  threw  the  half-conscious  sufferer 
into   an  agony  of   supersensitive    disturbance. 


The   Story  of  a  New  York  House.      131 

Then  there  came  a  silence  that  seemed  un- 
naturally deep,  yet  it  was  only  the  silence  of  a 
summer  night  in  the  deserted  city  streets. 

Through  it  they  heard,  sharp  and  sudden, 
with  something  inexplicably  fearful  about  it, 
the  patter  of  running  feet.  They  had  heard 
that  sound  often  enough  that  night  and  the 
night  before;  but  these  feet  stopped  at  their 
own  door,  and  came  up  the  steps,  and  the  run- 
ner beat  and  pounded  on  the  heavy  panels. 

Father  and  child  looked  in  each  other's  eyes, 
and  then  Jacob  Dolph  left  his  post  at  the  foot 
of  the  bed,  and,  passing  out  of  the  room,  went 
down  the  stairs  with  deliberate  tread,  and 
opened  the  door. 

A  negro's  face,  almost  gray  in  its  mad  fear, 
stared  into  his  with  a  desperate  appeal  which 
the  lips  could  not  utter.  Dolph  drew  the  man 
in,  and  shut  the  door  behind  him.  The  negro 
leaned,  trembling  and  exhausted,  against  the 
wall. 

*'  I  knowed  you'd  take  me  in.  Mist'  Dolph," 
he  panted  ;  ''  I'm  feared  they  seen  me,  though 
— they  was  mighty  clost  behind." 

They  were   close    behind    him,    indeed.     In 


32      The  Story  of  a   Nezv    York  House. 


half   a   minute   the  roar  of  the  mob  filled  the 
street   with   one  terrible   howl    and    shriek    of 


^■-'rh 


1 


^ 


lifr. 


W 


'■'i, 


animal  rage,  heard  high 
above  the  tramp  of  half  a  thou- 
sand feet ;  and  the  beasts  of  disorder,  gathered 
from  all  the  city's  holes  and  dens  of  crime, 
wild  for  rapine  and  outrage,  burst  upon  them, 
sweeping   up    the    steps,    hammering   at    the 


Have    you    got   a    nigger    here' 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      1 3  3 

great  doors,  crying  for  the  blood  of  the  help- 
less and  the  innocent. 

Foreign  faces,  almost  all !  Irish,  mostly ;  but 
there  were  heavy,  ignorant  German  types  of 
feature  uplifted  under  the  gas-light;  sallow, 
black-mustached  Magyar  faces ;  thin,  acute, 
French  faces — all  with  the  stamp  of  old-world 
ignorance  and  vice  upon  them. 

The  door  opened,  and  the  white-haired  old 
gentleman,  erect,  haughty,  with  brightening 
eyes,  faced  the  leader  of  the  mob — a  great 
fellow,  black-bearded,  who  had  a  space  to  him- 
self on  the  stoop,  and  swung  his  broad  shoul- 
ders from  side  to  side, 

''  Have  you  got  a  nigger  here  ?  "  he  began, 
and  then  stopped  short,  for  Jacob  Dolph  was 
looking  upon  the  face  of  his  son. 

Vagabond  and  outcast,  he  had  the  vaga- 
bond's quick  wit,  this  leader  of  infuriate  crime, 
and  some  one  good  impulse  stirred  in  him  of 
his  forfeited  gentlehood.  He  turned  savagely 
upon  his  followers. 

"He  ain't  here!"  he  roared.  *' I  told  you 
so — I  saw  him  turn  the  corner." 

*'  Shtap  an'  burrn  the  bondholder's  house  !  " 


134       The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

yelled  a  man  behind.  Eustace  Dolph  turned 
round  with  a  furious,  threatening  gesture. 

"You  damned  fool!"  he  thundered;  "he's 
no  bondholder — he's  one  of  lis.  Go  on,  I 
tell  you  !  Will  you  let  that  nigger  get 
away?  " 

He  half  drove  them  down  the  steps.  The 
old  man  stepped  out,  his  face  aflame  under  his 
white  hair,  his  whole  frame  quivering. 

"  You  lie,  sir  I  "  he  cried  ;  but  his  voice  was 
drowned  in  the  howl  of  the  mob  as  it  swept 
around  the  corner,  forgetting  all  things  else  in 
the  madness  of  its  hideous  chase. 

When  Jacob  Dolph  returned  to  his  wife's 
chamber,  her  feeble  gaze  was  lifted  to  the  ceil- 
ing. At  the  sound  of  his  footsteps  she  let  it 
fall  dimly  upon  his  face.  He  was  thankful 
that,  in  that  last  moment  of  doubtful  quicken- 
ing, she  could  not  read  his  eyes ;  and  she 
passed  away,  smiling  sweetly,  one  of  her  white 
old  hands  in  his,  and  one  in  her  child's. 


Age   takes  small   account  of  the  immediate 
flight    of    time.     To    the    young,    a   year  is  a 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      135 

mighty  span.  Be  it  a  happy  or  an  unhappy 
year  that  youth  looks  forward  to,  it  is  a 
vista  that  stretches  far  into  the  future.  And 
when  it  is  done,  this  interminable  year,  and 
youth,  just  twelve  months  older,  looks  back  to 
the  first  of  it,  what  a  long  way  off  it  is !  What 
tremendous  progress  we  have  made !  How 
much  more  we  know !  How  insufficient  are 
the  standards  by  which  we  measured  the  world 
a  poor  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days 
back! 

But  age  has  grown  habituated  to  the  flight 
of  time.  Years  ?  we  have  seen  so  many  of 
them  that  they  make  no  great  impression  upon 
us.  What !  is  it  ten  years  since  young  Midas 
first  came  to  the  counting-room,  asking  humbly 
for  an  entry-clerk's  place — he  who  is  now  the 
head  of  the  firm  ?  Bless  us  !  it  seems  like  yes- 
terday. Is  it  ten  years  since  we  first  put  on 
that  coat  ?  Why,  it  must  be  clean  out  of  the 
fashion  by  this  time. 

But  age  does  not  carry  out  the  thought,  and 
ask  if  itself  be  out  of  the  fashion.  Age  knows 
better.  A  few  wrinkles,  a  stoop  in  the  back,  a 
certain  slowness  of  pace,  do  not  make  a  man 


136      The  Story  of  a  New    York  House. 

old  at  sixty — nor  at  seventy,  neither  ;  for  now 
you  come  to  think  of  it,  the  ten  years  we  were 
speaking  of  is  gone,  and  it  is  seventy  now,  and 
not  sixty.  Seventy !  Why,  'tis  not  to  be 
thought  of  as  old  age — save  when  it  may  be 
necessary  to  rebuke  the  easy  arrogance  of 
youth. 

The  time  had  come  to  Jacob  Dolph  when  he 
could  not  feel  that  he  was  growing  old.  He 
was  old,  of  course,  in  one  sense.  He  was  sixty- 
one  when  the  war  broke  out ;  and  they  had  not 
allowed  him  to  form  a  regiment  and  go  to  the 
front  at  its  head.  But  what  was  old  for  a 
soldier  in  active  service  was  not  old  for  a  well- 
preserved  civilian.  True,  he  could  never  be 
the  same  man  again,  now  that  poor  Aline  was 
gone.  True,  he  was  growing  more  and  more 
disinclined  for  active  exercise,  and  he  regretted 
he  had  led  so  sedentary  a  life.  But  though  '64 
piled  itself  up  on  '63,  and  '65  on  top  of  that, 
these  arbitrary  divisions  of  time  seemed  to  him 
but  trivial. 

Edith  was  growing  old,  perhaps  ;  getting 
to  be  a  great  girl,  taller  than  her  mother 
and     fairer    of    complexion,    yet    not     unlike 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.      137 

her,  he  sometimes  thought,  as  she  began  to 
manage  the  affairs  of  the  house,  and  to  go 
about  the  great  shabby  mansion  with  her 
mother's  keys  jingling  at  her  girdle.  For  the 
years  went  on  crawling  one  over  the  other, 
and  soon  it  was  1873,  and  Edith  was  eighteen 
years  old. 

One  rainy  day  in  this  year  found  Jacob 
Dolph  in  Wall  Street.  Although  he  himself 
did  not  think  so,  he  was  an  old  man  to  others, 
and  kindly  hands,  such  as  were  to  be  found 
even  in  that  infuriate  crowd,  had  helped  him 
up  the  marble  steps  of  the  Sub-Treasury  and 
had  given  him  lodgment  on  one  of  the  great 
blocks  of  marble  that  dominate  the  street. 
From  where  he  stood  he  could  see  Wall  Street, 
east  and  west,  and  the  broad  plaza  of  Broad 
Street  to  the  south,  filled  with  a  compact  mass 
of  men,  half  hidden  by  a  myriad  of  umbrellas, 
rain-soaked,  black,  glinting  in  the  dim  light. 
So  might  a  Roman  legion  have  looked,  when 
each  man  raised  his  targum  above  his  head  and 
came  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  his  neighbor 
for  the  assault. 

There  was  a  confused,  ant-like  movement  in 


138       The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 

the  vast  crowd,  and  a  dull  nuirnuir  came  from 
it,  rising,  in  places,  into  excited  shouts.  Here 
and  there  the  fringe  of  the  mass  swelled  up 
and  swept  against  the  steps  of  some  building, 
forcing,  or  trying  to  force,  an  entry.  Some- 
times a  narrow  stream  of  men  trickled  into  the 
half-open  doorway;  sometimes  the  great  por- 
tals closed,  and  then  there  was  a  mad  outcry 
and  a  low  groan,  and  the  foremost  on  the  steps 
suddenly  turned  back,  and  in  some  strange 
way  slipped  through  the  throng  and  spetl  in 
all  directions  to  bear  to  hushed  or  clamorous 
ofifices  the  news  that  this  house  or  that  bank 
had  "  suspended  payment."  '*  Busted,"  the 
panting  messengers  said  to  white-faced  mer- 
chants ;  and  in  the  slang  of  the  street  was  con- 
veyed the  message  of  doom.  The  great  panic 
of  1873  was  upon  the  town — the  outcome  of 
long  years  of  unwarranted  self-confidence,  of 
selfish  extravagance,  of  conscienceless  specula- 
tion— and,  as  hour  after  hour  passed  by,  fort- 
unes were  lost  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and 
the  bread  was  taken  out  of  the  mouths  of  the 
helpless. 

After  Jacob  Dolph  had  stood  for  some  time, 


TJic  Story  of  a  New    York  House.       \  39 

looking  down  upon  the  tossing-  sea  of  black 
umbrellas,  he  saw  a  narrow  lane  made  through 
the  crowd  in  the  wake  of  a  little  party 
of  clerks  and  porters,  bearing  aid  perhaps  io 
some  stricken  bank.  Slipping  down,  he  fi>l- 
lowed  close  behind  them.  Perhaps  the  jostling 
hundreds  on  the  sidewalk  were  gentle  with 
him,  seeing  that  he  was  an  old  man  ;  perhaps 
the  strength  of  excitement  nerved  him,  for  he 
made  his  wa)'  down  the  street  to  the  flight  of 
steps  leading  to  the  tloor  of  a  tall  white  build- 
ing, and  he  crowded  liimself  up  among  the 
pack  that  was  striving  to  enter.  He  had  even 
got  so  far  that  he  ccnild  see  the  line  pouring  in 
above  his  head,  when  there  w.is  a  sudden  ces- 
sation of  motion  in  the  press,  and  one  leaf  of 
the  outer  iron  doors  swung  forward,  meeting 
the  other,  already  closed  to  bar  the  crush, 
and  two  green-painted  panels  stood,  impassa- 
ble, between  him  antl  the  last  of  the  Dolph 
fortune. 

One  howl  and  roar,  and  the  crowd  turnetl 
back  on  itself,  and  swept  him  with  it.  In  five 
minutes  a  thousand  offices  knew  (^f  the  great- 
est  failure  of  the  da\'  ;   and   Jacob  l)ol[)h  was 


I40       TJic  Story  of  a  Nciv  York  House. 

leaning — weak,  gasping,  dazed — against  the 
side  wall  of  a  hallway  in  William  Street,  with 
two  stray  office-boys  staring  at  him  out  of 
their  small,  round,  unsympathetic  eyes. 

Let  us  not  ask  what  wild  temptation  led 
the  old  man  back  again  to  risk  all  he  owned 
in  that  hellish  game  that  is  played  in  the  nar- 
row street.  We  may  remember  this  :  that  he 
saw  his  daughter  growing  to  womanhood  in 
that  silent  and  almost  deserted  house,  shoul- 
dered now  by  low  tenements  and  wretched 
shops  and  vile  drinking-places ;  that  he  may 
have  pictured  for  her  a  brighter  life  in  that 
world  that  had  long  ago  left  him  behind  it  in 
his  bereaved  and  disgraced  loneline.  s  ;  that  he 
had  had  some  vision  of  her  young  beauty  ful- 
filling its  destiny  amid  sweeter  and  fairer  sur- 
roundings. And  let  us  not  forget  that  he 
knew  no  other  means  than  these  to  win  the 
money  for  which  he  cared  little  ;  which  he 
found  absolutely  needful. 

After  Jacob  Dolph  had  yielded  for  the  last 
time  to  the  temptation  that  had  conquered 
him  once  before,  and  had  ruined  his  son's 
soul  ;  after  that  final  disastrous  battle  with  the 


TJic  Story  of  a  New    York  House.      141 

gamblers  of  Wall  Street,  wherein  he  lost  the 
last  poor  remnant  of  the  great  Dolph  fort- 
une, giving  up  with  it  his  father's  home  for- 
ever, certain  old  bread  of  his  fathers  casting 
came  back  to  him  upon 


A  b  r  a  m  V"  a  n 
Riper  came  to  the 
daughter    of 


the  house  of  Dolph,  a  little  before  it  became 
certain  that  the  house  must  be  sold,  and  told 
her,  in  his  dry  way,  that  he  had  to  make  a 
business  communication  to  her,  for  he  feared 
that  her  father  was  hardly  capable  of  under- 
standing such  matters  any  longer.    She  winced 


142       The  Story  of  a  Nczv  York  House. 

a  little  ;  but  he  took  a  load  off  her  heart  when 
he  made  his  slow,  precise  explanation.  The 
fact  was,  he  said,  that  the  business  transac- 
tions between  her  father  and  himself,  conse- 
quent upon  the  defalcation  of  her  brother 
Eustace,  had  never  been  closed,  in  all  these 
seventeen  years.  (Edith  Dolph  trembled.)  It 
was  known  at  the  time  that  the  property 
transferred  by  her  father  rather  more  than 
covered  the  amount  of  her  brother's — pecu- 
lation. But  her  father's  extreme  sensitiveness 
had  led  him  to  avoid  a  precise  adjustment, 
and  as  the  property  transferred  was  subject  to 
certain  long  leases,  he,  Mr.  Van  Riper,  had 
thought  it  best  to  wait  until  the  property  was 
sold  and  the  account  closed,  to  settle  the  mat- 
ter with  Mr.  Dolph.  This  had  lately  been 
done,  and  Mr.  Van  Riper  found  that,  deduct- 
ing charges,  and  interest  on  his  money  at 
seven  per  cent.,  he  had  made  by  the  trans- 
action six  thousand  three  hundred  and  seventy 
dollars.  This  sum,  he  thought,  properly  be- 
longed to  Mr.  Dolph.  And  if  Miss  Dolph 
would  take  the  counsel  of  an  old  friend  of  her 
father's,  she  would  leave  the  sum  in  charge  of 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      143 

the  house  of  Abram  Van  Riper's  Son.  The 
house  would  invest  it  at  ten  per  cent. — he 
stopped  and  looked  at  Edith,  but  she  only 
answered  him  with  innocent  eyes  of  attention 
— and  would  pay  her  six  hundred  and  thirty- 
seven  dollars  annually  in  quarterly  payments. 
It  might  be  of  assistance  to  Mr.  Dolph  in  his 
present  situation. 

It  was  of  assistance.  They  lived  on  it, 
father  and  daughter,  with  such  aid  as  Decora- 
tive Art — just  introduced  to  this  country — 
gave  in  semi-remunerative  employment  for  her 
deft  fingers. 

Abram  Van  Riper,  when  he  left  the  weeping, 
grateful  girl,  marched  out  into  the  street,  turned 
his  face  toward  what  was  once  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage, and  said  to  his  soul: 

"  I  think  that  v/ill  balance  any  obligation  my 
father  may  have  put  himself  under  in  buying 
that  State  Street  house  too  cheap.  Now  then, 
old  gentleman,  you  can  lie  easy  in  your  grave. 
The  Van  Ripers  ain't  beholden  to  the  Dolphs, 
that's  sure." 

•jf  ^  ^  ^  •»  -^  ^ 

A  few  years  ago — shall  we  say  as  many  as 


144       The  Story  of  a  New  York  House. 


ten  ? — there  were  two  small  rooms  up  in  a 
quiet  street  in  Harlem,  tenanted  by  an  old 
gentleman  and  a  young  gentlewoman  ;  and  in 
the  front  room,  which  was  the  young  woman's 
room  by  night,  but  a  sort  of  parlor  or  sitting- 
room  in  the  daytime,  the 
old  gentleman  stood  up, 
four  times  a  year,  to  have 
his  collar  pulled 
up,  and  his 
necktie  set 
right,  and  his 
coat  dusted  off 
by  a  pair  of 
small  A\'  h  i  t  e 
hands,  so  that 
he  might  be  presentable  when  he  went  down 
town  to  collect  certain  moneys  due  him. 

They  were  small  rooms,  but  they  were 
bright  and  cheerful,  being  decorated  with 
sketches  and  studies  of  an  artistic  sort,  which 
may  have  been  somewhat  crude  and  uncertain 
as  to  treatment,  but  were  certainly  pleasant 
and  feminine.  Yet  few  saw  them  save  the 
young  woman    and  the  old    man.     The   most 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      145 

frequent  visitor  was  a  young  artist  from  the 
West,  who  often  escorted  Miss  Dolph  to  and 
from  the  Art  League  rooms.  His  name  was 
Rand  ;  he  had  studied  in  Munich ;  he  had  a 
future  before  him,  and  was  making  money 
on  his  prospects.  He  might  just  as  well  have 
lived  in  luxurious  bachelor  quarters  in  the 
lower  part  of  the  city  ;  but,  for  reasons  of  his 
own,  he  preferred  to  live  in  Harlem. 

Old  Mr.  Dolph  insisted  on  going  regularly 
every  quarter-day  to  the  office  of  the  Van 
Riper  Estate,  "  to  collect,"  as  he  said,  "  the  in- 
terest due  him."  Four  times  a  year  he  went 
down  town  on  the  Eighth  Avenue  cars,  where 
the  conductors  soon  learned  to  know  him  by 
his  shiny  black  broadcloth  coat  and  his  snow- 
white  hair.  His  daughter  was  always  uneasy 
about  these  trips  ;  but  her  father  could  not  be 
dissuaded  from  them.  To  him  they  were  his 
one  hold  on  active  life — the  all-important 
events  of  the  year.  It  would  have  broken  his 
tender  old  heart  to  tell  him  that  he  could  not 
go  to  collect  his  "interest."  And  so  she  set 
his  necktie  right,  and  he  went. 

When   he  got  out  of  the  car  at  Abingdon 


146       The  Story  of  a  New  York  House, 

Square  he  tottered,  in  his  slow,  old  way,  to  a 
neat  structure  which  combined  modern  jaunti- 
ness  with  old-time  solidity,  and  which  was 
labelled  simply:  ''Office  of  the  Van  Riper 
Estate,"  and  there  he  told  the  smilingly  indul- 
gent clerk  that  he  thought  he  would  ''  take  it 
in  cash,  this  time,"  and,  taking  it  in  cash,  went 
forth. 

And  then  he  walked  down  through  Green- 
wich Village  into  New  York  city,  and  into  the 
street  where  stood  the  house  that  his  father 
had  built.  Thus  he  had  gone  to  view  it  four 
times  a  year,  during  every  year  save  the  first, 
since  he  had  given  it  up. 

He  had  seen  it  go  through  one  stage  of  de- 
cadence after  another.  First  it  was  rented,  by 
its  new^  owner,  to  the  Jewish  pawnbroker,  with 
his  numerous  family.  Good,  honest  folk  they 
were,  who  tried  to  make  the  house  look  fine, 
and  the  five  daughters  made  the  front  stoop 
resplendent  of  summer  evenings.  But  they 
had  long  ago  moved  up-town.  Then  it  was 
a  cheap  boarding-house,  and  vulgar  and  flashy 
men  and  women  swarmed  out  in  the  morning 
and  in  at  eventide.     Then  it  was  a    lodging- 


The  Story  of  a  New    York  House.     147 

house,  and  shabby  people  let  themselves  out 
and  in  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night.  And 
last  of  all  it  had  become  a  tenement-house,  and 
had  fallen  into  line  with  its  neighbors  to  left 
and  right,  and  the  window-panes  were  broken, 
and  the  curse  of  misery  and  poverty  and  utter 
degradation  had  fallen  upon  it. 

But  still  it  lifted  its  grand  stone  front,  still  it 
stood,  broad  and  great,  among   all  the  houses 
in  the  street.     And  it  was  the  old  man's  cus- 
tom, after  he  had  stood  on  the  opposite  side- 
walk  and  gazed   at    it    for  a  while,  to   go    to 
a   little    French    cafe    a  block    to    the    east- 
ward, and   there  to   take   a   glass  of  vermouth 
gomme—\t  was   a  mild  drink,  and  pleasing  to 
an  old  man.     Sometimes  he  chanced  to  find 
some  one  in    this   place  who  would  listen  to 
his    talk    about    the   old    house— he  was  very 
grand  ;    but    they   were    decent    people   who 
went  to  that  cafe,  and  perhaps  would  go  back 
with  him  a  block  and  look   at  it.     We  would 
not  have  talked  to  chance  people  in  an  east- 
side  French   cafe.     But    then  we   have   never 
owned   such  a  house,  and  lost  it — and  every- 
thing else. 


148      TJic  Story  of  a  New    York  House, 

■Jf  -X-  74-  ^  4f  -X-  Tf 

Late  one  hot  summer  afternoon  young  Rand 
sat  in  his  studio,  working  enthusiastically  on  a 
"  composition."  A  new  school  of  art  had  in- 
vaded New  York,  and  compositions  were  every- 
thing, for  the  moment,  whether  they  composed 
anything  or  nothing.  He  heard  a  nervous  rat- 
tling at  his  door-knob,  and  he  opened  the 
door.  A  young  woman  lifted  a  sweet,  flushed, 
frightened  face  to  his. 

**  Oh,  John,"  she  cried,  '*  father  hasn't  come 
home  yet,  and  it's  five  o'clock,  and  he  left 
home  at  nine." 

John  Rand  threw  off  his  flannel  jacket,  and 
got  into  his  coat. 

''We'll  find  him;  don't  worry,  dear,"  he 
said. 

They  found  him  within  an  hour.  The  great 
city,  having  no  further  use  for  the  old  Dolph 
house,  was  crowding  it  out  of  existence.  With 
the  crashing  of  falling  bricks,  and  the  creaking 
of  the  tackle  that  swung  the  great  beams  down- 
ward, the  old  house  was  crumbling  into  a  gap 
between  two  high  walls.  Already  you  could 
see  through  to  where  the  bright  new   bricks 


The  Story  of  a  New  York  House.      149 

were  piled  at  the  back  to  build  the  huge  eight- 
story  factory  that  was  to  take  its  place.  But 
it  was  not  to  see  this  demolition  that  the  crowd 
was  gathered,  filling  the  narrow  street.  It 
stood,  dense,  ugly,  vulgar,  stolidly  intent,  gaz- 
ing at  the  windows  of  the  house  opposite — a 
poor  tenement  house. 

As  they  went  up  the  steps  they  met  the 
young  hospital  surgeon,  going  back  to  his  am- 
bulance. 

"  You  his  folks  ?  "  he  inquired.  ''  Sorry  to  tell 
you  so,  but  I  can't  do  any  good.  Sunstroke, 
I  suppose — may  have  been  something  else — 
but  it's  collapse  now,  and  no  mistake.  You 
take  charge,  sir? "  he  finished,  addressing 
Rand. 

Jacob  Dolph  was  lying  on  his  back  in  the 
bare  front  room  on  the  first  floor.  His  daugh- 
ter fell  on  her  knees  by  his  side,  and  made  as 
though  she  would  throw  her  arms  around 
him;  but,  looking  in  his  face,  she  saw  death 
quietly  coming  upon  him,  and  she  only  bent 
down  and  kissed  him,  while  her  tears  wet  his 
brow. 

Meanwhile  a  tall  Southerner,  with  hair  half- 


150       The  Story  of  a  New  York  House, 


way  down  his  neck,  and  kindly  eyes  that 
moved  in  unison  with  his  broad  gestures,  was 
talking  to  Rand. 

''  I    met    the    ol'   gentleman    in   the   French 
caf^,  neah   heah,"  he   said,   *'  and   he  was  jus' 
honing   to  have   me    come 
up    and    see    his 
house,    seh — house 
he    used    to    have. 
Well,  I  came  right 


along,  an'  when  we  got  here,  sure  'nough, 
they's  taihin'  down  that  house.  Neveh  felt  so 
bad  in  all  my  life,  seh.  He  wasn't  expectin' 
of  it,  and  I  'lowed  'twuz  his  old  home  like, 
and  he  was  right  hahd  hit,  fo*  a  fact.  He  said 
to  me,  *  Good-day,  seh,'  sezee  ;  '  good-day, 
seh,'  he  says  to  me,  an*  then   he  starts  across 


The  Story  of  a  NcikJ  York  House.      1 5 1 

the  street,  an'  first  thing  I  know,  he  falls  down 
flat  on  his  face,  seh.  Saw  that  theah  brick 
an'  mortar  comin'  down,  an'  fell  flat  on  his  face. 
This  hyeh  pill-man  'lowed  'twuz  sunstroke ; 
but  a  Southern  man  like  I  am  don't  need  to 
be  told  what  a  gentleman's  feelings  are  when 
he  sees  his  house  a-torn  down — no,  seh.  If 
you  ever  down  oweh  way,  seh,  I'd  be  right 
glad " 

But  Rand  had  lifted  Edith  from,  the  floor, 
for  her  father  would  know  her  no  more,  and 
had  passed  out  of  this  world,  unconscious  of 
all  the  squalor  and  ruin  about  him  ;  and  the 
poor  girl  was  sobbing  on  his  shoulder. 

He  was  very  tender  with  her,  very  sorr>'  for 
her — but  he  had  never  known  the  walls  that 
fell  across  the  way ;  he  was  a  young  man,  an 
artist,  with  a  great  future  before  him,  and  the 
world  was  young  to  him,  and  she  was  to  be 
his  wife. 

Still,  looking  down,  he  saw  that  sweetly 
calm,  listening  look,  that  makes  beautiful  the 
faces  of  the  dead,  come  over  the  face  of  Jacob 
Dolph,  as  though  he,  lying  there,  heard  the 
hammers  of  the  workmen  breaking  down  his 


152       The  Story  of  a  New   York  House. 

father's  house,  brick  by  brick — and  yet  the 
sound  could  no  longer  jar  upon  his  ear  or 
grieve  his  gentle  spirit. 


RARE  BOOK 
COLLECTION 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

AT 

CHAPEL  HILL 

Wilmer 
175 


